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-MASTERPIECES OF 
REEK DRAWING AND 
PAINTING 


_ MASTERPIECES 
OF GREEK DRAWING AND 
PAINTING 


By 
URS Eee Deeg 248 2 al Bs 


PROFESSOR OF CLASSICAL ARCHAEOLOGY IN THE 
UNIVERSITY OF BASLE 


WITH ONE HUNDRED & SIXTY 
ILLUSTRATIONS 


‘Translated by 
ee ca te 7 TY 


PROFESSOR OF CLASSICAL ARCHAEOLOGY IN THE 
UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD 


NEW YORK 


THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
1926 


e PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN 
S Aa Rients 6k oy 


PREFACE 


HE plates contain a seletion from the eight hundred repto- 

dudtions in my three-volume work Malerei und Zeichnung der 

Griechen (Munich, 1923, Bruckmann). ‘The first principle of 

selection was naturally artistic importance: this principle 

usually coincides with that of importance for the history of 
att, but not always, for a work of slight value in itself may sometimes 
give an echo of some lost masterpiece. To omit such altogether was 
hardly possible save at the expense of coherence: but I have testrited 
their number to the minimum; some may think to one only (Fig. 5). That 
is also the only place where I have contented myself with an inferior 
reproduction of the original: it does not pretend to be more than an 
indication, and as such it has a less painful effe& than better reproductions 
of similar works. 

For the rest this little book makes no scientific pretensions. It is 
intended neither as a guide to the study of vases nor as a history of 
Greek painting. It is what its title denotes, a collection, though not 
an atbitrary one, of masterpieces of Greek painting and drawing (any one 
who cates may call the Pompeian wall-paintings Roman, as long as he 
realises that the art of the Imperial age is the last phase of Hellenistic 
att). The chief obje& of the text is to answer such questions as the 
pictures naturally suggest to the lover of the arts: this involves at least 
an indication of the chief connexions. General features requiring 
explanation ate discussed at their first appearance in our selection of 
pictures. Those who wish to know more will find it easily in my large 
work, where I have kept the main text as free as possible from archaeo- 
logical ballast. For vase-painting many readers will have by them 
Buschor’s admirable book, which has appeared both in German and 
in English, 

There are still a few observations to make about the reprodudtions. 
In drawings after vases it is customary to indicate the purple details of 
the original by a grey tone. Plate 4 gives a good example of the way 
in which the piture-bands running round the curved surface of a vase 
are rolled and flattened out in the reproduction. ‘The circular pictures 
ate sometimes from plates but usually from drinking-cups, in which 
they seldom cover the whole surface of the interior. They are framed 


v 


PREFACE 


at first by narrow lines, later by bands of maeander. ‘These borders are 
usually cut off square in my reprodu€tions, and sometimes even omitted, 
to avoid excessive reduction of the piftures themselves: this makeshift, 
unavoidable in my large book, must be tolerated here also, and excused 
by the conditions of our time. Other matters will explain themselves. 
When the references in the margin of the text are bracketed, it means 
that the pictures are mentioned:at this point but not described at length. 

In conclusion I must express my hearty thanks to the leading investi- 
gator of Attic vases, Prof. J. D. Beazley of Oxford, for translating the 
book into English. 

pegs A 


A worD of two with the author’s sanéion. In the two books men- 
tioned on p. 145, I have given my opinion as to the authorship of nearly 
all the red-figured vases here reproduced or discussed. I will therefore 
confine myself to a single important point: Prof. Pfuhl seems inclined 
to run together what I consider to be four different artists :— 
(1) Euphronios, painter of Figs. 46 and 47; (2) the Panaitios painter, 
painter of Figs. 48 and 49; (3) the Pistoxenos painter, painter of Figs. 
66-67, 69, and 70; (4) the Penthesilea painter, painter of Figs. 71-73. 

Fig. 81 is not set rightly, the ground-line should of course be parallel 
to the bottom of the page ; Fig. 84 is impaired by the restoration of the 
tight shoulder and atm of the youth in the original. It is clear from 
the original of Fig. 103 (to which the old drawing here reproduced 
does scant justice) that the little boy is not Dionysos, as suggested on 
p. 76, but a satyr. There is no reason to suppose that the unintelligible 
inscription mentioned on p. 52 is obscene. 

A few corrections have been made in the text and in the titles of 
the pictures. 

It may be well to point out that the term ‘classical art’ is used 
throughout in the narrower sense in which W6lfflin uses it, and not in 
the wider sense as equivalent to ‘ ancient Greek and Roman art.’ 


J. D. B. 


vi 


CONTENTS 


PREFACE page v 
INTRODUCTION 
General remarks. Greek sculpture I 
Nature and technique of Greek vase-painting 3 
Greek monumental painting 7 
COMMENTARY 
The beginnings. The geomettic style 10 
The Orientalising style 13 
The black-figure style 15 
Ionian 15 
Chalcidian 19 
Corinthian 19 
Laconian 22 
Attic 23 
The severe red-figure style (Attic) 30 
The beginnings 32 
First bloom 38 
The prime and the late period 44 
Etruscan wall-painting of the archaic period 53 
The classical style 54 
Early classical vase-pi€tures and paintings 55 
The white sepulchral lekythoi 66 
The red-figure style of the Periclean age 73 
The florid style of the late fifth century 78 
The vase-painting of the fourth century 83 
Drawing on bronze and ivory 85 
Monumental painting from the later fifth century onwards 86 
Early works 87 
Copies in Pompeian wall-painting 89 
The Alexander mosaic 92 


vil 


CONTENTS 


The marble pi@ure of Niobe page 99 
Wall-paintings in the style of the fourth and third 
century 102 
Wall-paintings of advanced Hellenistic style 108 
Decotative wall-painting : Boscoteale, Villa Item, 
Aldobrandini Wedding 118 
Portrait painting: mummy portraits 123 
Special classes of Hellenistic painting 127 
The pi€ure of manners 128 
The animal-piece and the still-life 132 
Landscape painting 139 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 144 


INDEX 


146 


Viii 


MASTERPIECES 
OF GREEK DRAWING AND 
PAINTING 


INTRODUCTION 


ROM the west coast of Asia Minor, the land of Homer, to 
the Golden Gate of San Francisco and away to Sydney and 
Wellington ; from the immigration of the Greeks into their 
historical homes to the present day: four thousand yeats of 
history and a single culture unite the peoples of the West. The 
roots of their thought and their emotion are in Hellas, where European 
humanity manifested itself for the first time, and with incomparable clarity, 
purity, and beauty, in house and State, in art and poetry, in thought and 
science. Wherever Europeans have settled and great communities have 
expressed themselves in monumental buildings, there we find Greek 
columns and pediments, Greek orders and mouldings. ‘These are some- 
thing more than an historical symbol: for even where the archite@ has 
been but partially conscious of the forms which he has employed, some- 
thing of the magic of Hellas lingers in these late descendants of Greek 
architecture. In architecture and the figurative arts, as in philosophy and 
in poetry, the Greeks turned all they touched into forms of crystalline 
clearness, whose beauty was the natural expression of their intrinsic 
necessity. ‘Their works of architeéture and of political and philosophical 
thought, no less than their poetical and artistic creations, ate permeated 
with organic life. The Greeks could not but feel organically, for man 
was to them the measure of all things. Greek humanity and Greek 
mastery of form laid the foundations of spiritual Europe, and raised a 
structure on those foundations of a lustre which no subsequent period, 
however great its achievements, has equalled: for the lustre is the light 
of pure youth. 
Mote than two thousand years divide us from the creative periods 
of Hellas: and the full magic of Hellas reveals itself only to those who 
live in the works of the Greeks, and who moreover know the land of 


A : 


INTRODUCTION 


Greece, not from hurried visits, but as a second home. For those who 
have not enjoyed that good fortune, and who are unacquainted with 
the Greek language, there is only one road to the real Hellas: the con- 
templation of Greek art. But even dire vision is not sufficient to bridge 
the intervening years: some historical preparation we must have, unless 
we ate content to see the works of the past with the eyes of our own time. 
The scholar also, of course, sees with the eyes of his time: but his eyes 
ate trained to look at things historically and to see the detail as part of the 
whole. Moreover, it is not every one who can appreciate artistic forms 
at first sight: the eye for form is rarer than the ear for music. The 
text which follows is intended to make the pictures easier to understand, 
both historically and artistically. 

At the mention of Greek art every one thinks first of Greek sculpture. 
And rightly: for however splendid the achievements of the cathedral 
sculptors, of Michelangelo, of Rodin, no other people has had a sculpture 
of such grandeur, abundance and perfection, or playing such an important 
patt in the total life of the people. This supremacy of sculpture is the 
artistic expression of the idea which Greek culture embodies in a thousand 
forms, the idea which was resumed in two words at the entrance to the 
Delphian temple of Apollo :—Know thyself. Man, the noble, generous 
fruit of southern nature, is everything for the Greek: man, body and soul 
in one. To the Greek, the soul does not speak from the eye or the coun- 
tenance only, but is expressed and embodied in the fine forms, the natural 
nobility and the well-bred demeanour of the whole body in movement 
or at rest. Hence the hero of a drama can say ‘ my body’ for ‘I.’ In 
the religious life of the Greeks we find the same plastic force at work as 
in their art, and the same joyous youthful consciousness being moulded 
into eternally valid forms by great poets and artists. In his human- 
shaped divinities the Greek has incorporated and transfigured all that 
he found in his own heart and in the whole of human life, and every 
impression which he received from nature assumed human form: from 
field and forest, mountain and valley, sea and heaven, his own countenance 
looked back at him a thousandfold, and he felt the influence of powers 
with human souls. His aim was to make himself, both in body and in 
soul, as beautiful, as good, as noble, and finally as moral, as his natute 
dicated and permitted; to develop his qualities and capacities to their 
highest point ; and to fuse them into a perfe& harmony: and what human 
imperfection was unable to attain found realisation in the ideal creations 
of poets and artists. What the noblest minds longed for, what the pious 
heart felt in its depths, stood solid and palpable in sculpture for all to see. 


2 


INTRODUCTION : VASE-PAINTING 


When the genius of Winckelmann opened a new epoch in the spiritual 
life of Europe, his starting-point was Greek sculpture. His divining eye 
detected the essence of Hellenism even when it was obscured in late works 
and Roman copies. ‘To-day, except for purposes of tesearch, we can 
afford to ignore many of these falsified and often wrongly restored works. 
For we possess what Winckelmann longed for, original Greek works of the 
highest rank. Archaic sculpture; the sculpture of the Temple of Zeus 
at Olympia; the sculpture of the Parthenon: what a world lies in these 
three words ; and how much we have besides! With respect to Greek 
drawing and painting Winckelmann’s position was no better, and here 
his power of divination seems even more remarkable. He knew, indeed, 
important examples of Campanian wall-painting, with its reminiscences of 
the monumental art of Greece. But such vase-paintings as he knew were 
nearly all mannered products of an aftermath. Yet even in these, in spite 
of their vapid and mechanical execution, he felt the high style which lay Fig. 109 
behind. In the three generations since the first great finds in Etruscan 
tombs, the number of our Greek vases has become almost overwhelming. 
We have important specimens by the thousand, and masterpieces by the 
hundred, pieces which are as little inferior to the creations of monu- 
mental art as drawings or engravings by modern artists to their paintings. 
Comparisons with modern art are apt to be misleading, for everything 
was different in Greece: but this comparison is permissible, in spite of 
Greek vase-painting being not free but applied art, decoration of vessels. 
For the chief characteristic of Greek vase-painting is that, like monumental 
painting and like sculpture, it was dominated by the human figure. That 
constitutes its importance but also its limitation. Painting in our sense 
it could never be, without ceasing to perform its tectonic function. Real- 
istic paintings on vases ate inconceivable in Greek art. Even in the 
periods when monumental painting was no more than coloured drawing 
flatly treated, the vase-painters made but a few short-lived experiments 
with a colouring approximating to nature: they soon developed a kind Figs. 3-5, 
of painting better suited to their technique and their function as decorators 1° 
—silhouette painting in lustrous dark-brown pigment, with details ren- Figs. 6-9, 
dered by incised lines showing up light on dark, and by a decorative use '1-?® 
of lustreless purple and white. This is painting, of course, as understood 
by the early artist, but it is already a decorative painting adapted to the 
special conditions of the potter’s art, and even farther removed from 
natural appearances than the monumental painting of the time. It is 
called the black-figure style. 

Significantly enough, the subsequent development led not to painting 


3 


Figs. 27-34, 
36-67, 7I- 
80, 98-110 


INTRODUCTION : VASE-PAINTING 


ptoper but to pure drawing. To satisfy the demands of a style which had 
now become freer, the black-figure method was abandoned, first by the 
leading masters, then gradually by the rest, till by the beginning of the 
classical period it had almost disappeared: it survived, indeed, in small 
titual and local classes of vase, right into the Hellenistic period, atually 
outliving its successor, the ‘ red-figure Style,’ an Attic invention which 
dominated the markets of the world for two hundred years. With the 
introdudtion of the red-figure style, the Attic potters supplanted for good 
a large number of other fabrics: we know of over fifty. An offshoot 
of this Attic style continued to flourish in Lower Italy as late as the third 
century. Then vase-painting died out almost completely, and was supet- 
seded by pottery with reliefs. The red-figure style was a cteation which 
had the simplicity of genius. In monumental painting the figures were 
in colour, sometimes on a light, sometimes on a dark background. In 
the black-figure style they were dark on the reddish-yellow background 
of the clay. In order to be able to draw more freely, the relation was 
revetsed : the whole vase and the background of the figure were covered 
with the fine lustrous black, and the ornaments, figures and objects of 
the pictures reserved in the natural colour of the clay. 

This innovation took place during the transition from the severe to 
the mature archaic style, in the third quarter of the sixth century. At that 
time drawing was still strictly flat in charater, the line simple, and the 
Stylisation largely ornamental, so that it was easy for the pidures to 
perform their decorative fun@ion. The new technique was actually 
an advantage in this respect, for the drawing tested on a framework of 
lustrous taised relief-lines, the full effe& of which no reproduétion can 
give. The instrument which produced them did not lend itself to swift 
and complicated movements of line: there was thus a happy consensus 
of severe style and technical restri@ions. Finer details, which did not 
show at a distance, could be put in with the pliant brush ; the brush could 
also be used to apply a golden-yellow obtained by diluting the black glaze, 
and thus to produce astonishingly pi€torial effeéts of blond hair, flickering 
fire, and the like. But these are details which tell no more in the total 
effect of the picture than the touches of red or white or even raised gold. 
In the main the drawing preserved its severely linear character, and 
even the perspective treatment of the body which soon came into vogue 
hardly affected at first the flatness of the design as a whole. It is quite 
true that when the black-figure style gave way to the red-figure ‘ the 
vittuosi of the ornamented surface’ were succeeded by ‘the delinea- 
tors of the moving surface’: but although the decorative effet was 


4 


INTRODUCTION : VASE-PAINTING 


not so strong as in the old silhouette style, it was not yet seriously 
impaired. 

In the mature archaic style, from the end of the sixth century to the Figs. 37- 
seventies of the fifth, vase-painting was at its height, and the best vases rank ©7 
among the finest artistic produéts of their period, a period which offers us 
the incomparable spectacle of the first stages in the emancipation of art 
from the age-long fetters of primitive modelling and drawing. ‘The 
vase-painters had already begun to sign their vases, but now the signatures 
multiply, and are occasionally accompanied by a word of self-praise or 
even a challenge to a fellow-painter. We often find two signatures on 
one vase, the paintet’s name, and the name of the owner of the factory, 
who might be the same as the painter but might also be different: for 
the larger factories could employ several painters simultaneously, the 
smaller several in succession. Another expression of the sense of per- 
sonality is the so-called love-inscription, in praise of fair youths or less 
commonly girls, a custom found even in the Zeus of Pheidias, on whose 
finger were the words ‘ Pantarkes is fair.’ 

Side by side with the red-figure style and the survival of the black- 
figure we find a third technique (excluding unimportant varieties) — 
white-ground painting. ‘The white ground is common in the late black- Figs. 35, 66, 
figure style, but there its only artistic importance is that it makes the black 7° 81-97 
silhouettes stand out still sharper from the background. It is otherwise 
when the white ground is painted in the technique and manner of the 
ted-figute style, but without the blacking-in of the background: here 
the contour-line as such acquired a fresh significance, and the element of 
drawing was thereby strengthened. But at the same time a pictorial 
element was added, small areas being filled in with black, larger with 
diluted glaze or later with lustreless colours: charming as such pictures 
ate, they contain an inherent contradiction ; and in this form the white- 
ground vase neither became very common nor went through an internal 
development. It obtained far finer effets where it remained almost 
pute drawing, merely grading its delicate brush-lines within a scale of 
golden sepia. ‘This happened first about the middle of the fifth century, 
in the classical style: and at the same time a powerful movement in the 
opposite direction set in, for in the oil-vessels used at tombs, the slender 
lekythoi, the durable glaze-painting gradually lost ground and ultimately 
was supetseded by painting in dull colours. A special class of vase 
thus atose in which a compromise between painting and drawing over- 
came the inherent contradiction. For except in a small late variety, the 
painters did not attempt to work out the coloured areas piforially in 


5 


INTRODUCTION : VASE-PAINTING 


accordance with the advances made in monumental painting. Outline 
drawing, and decorative colouring, often very vivid, united to form a 
thing of perfe& internal balance. 

The best white lekythoi are the most precious works of vase-painting 
in the mature classical period. For although beautiful and important 
red-figure vases continued to be produced in the half-century round 450, 
yet it became clearer and clearer as time went on that the red-figure style 
was by nature an archaic creation. The free drawing of the classical style, 
and the corporeal rounding of its figures, clashed with the technical 
and decorative conditions of red-figure vase-painting. And the repre- 
sentation of spatial environment, to which monumental art was now turn- 
ing its attention, was completely incompatible with those conditions. The 
atchaic style sometimes gave a suggestion of space, in a single plane, by 
means of such landscape elements as trees, rocks, buildings and the like : 
vase-painting also could do this without suffering, just as it could arrange 
incorporeal silhouettes in layers one behind the other. But now in the 
eatly classical style monumental painting began to represent space by an 
atraneement of the figures in tiers, with indication of the terrain: at 
first, it is true, the arrangement was in a single plane, but the standing- 
line common to all the figures—which had hitherto determined the con- 
formation of the piture—was abandoned. And now the body perspective 
also, strengthened by many three-quarter views which had hitherto been 
avoided, acquited an increased spatial importance, and in composition 
also true spatial effets were aimed at. ‘These innovations in the great 
monumental painting of the time, which covered wide spaces of wall 
with pictures containing hundreds of figures, threw the vase-painters into 
profound excitement. One group of them may even be described as 

Figs. 71,75, wild men, so impetuously did they attempt to follow in the steps of 
77 monumental painting. The attempt was bound to fail, because it 

was itteconcilably opposed to the technique of vase-painting and its 
decorative function. Time justified those who had never turned aside 

from the beaten track, and later painters learned a wise humility. Even 

Figs. 105, the arrangement of the figures in tiers on a landscape background indicated 
1°) by lines was transformed into a flat decorative scheme. ‘The finest 

Figs. 98- classical vase-pi@tures belong to the Periclean age. They are painted 
‘05 with a light hand, sometimes almost sketched rather than carried out in 
detail. The painters, one would think, were conscious that they could 

not get nearly as close to monumental art as their archaic predecessors : 

and in the course of the fifth century the signatures become rapidly rarer, 

and soon disappear. But the artistic self-restraint of the Periclean epoch 


6 


INTRODUCTION : MONUMENTAL PAINTING 


was followed by a kind of second bloom. ‘The florid style of the later Figs. 106- 
fifth century did not fall immediately and never fell altogether into smooth 1°9 
routine and cloying affectation : a spark of the genuine fire of late Pheidian 
att glows in it still, and certain of its works show the influence of great Fig. 108 
cteations of monumental painting. Lastly, in the fourth century, the 
Athenians tried to make a linear approximation to the new style of monu- 
mental art, and it is owing to this final effort that Attic painting died in Fig. 110 
beauty. The vase-painters of South Italy lacked the Attic sense of measure: 
after promising starts, and in spite of a talent for draughtsmanship, they 
fell into affectation and bombast. By the time they at last gave place to 
the relief-potters, the red-figure technique had outlived itself more than 
a century. 

At that time, at the turn from the fourth century to the third, monu- 
mental painting was in its prime: for as painting in our sense of the word, 
it reached its classic prime a hundred years later than sculpture. The 
Parthenon was alteady finished when the last third of the fifth century 
witnessed the decisive achievements of the masters Apollodoros, Zeuxis, 
and Parthasios, the last step in the development from a coloured drawing, 
with slight shading, on a background which was still half flat plane half 
landscape, to a teal spatial painting with a uniform system of light and 
shade. Something new and undreamt of had come into being, illusion- 
istic painting, capable of taking a piece of the outer world, seen as a unity, 
and making a deceptive reproduction of it on a flat surface. If man had 
not been from the beginning and always the chief subject of Greek art, 
the same development might now have taken place as in modern art, 
in which landscape-painting has played a great part even in the figure- 
picture, and at times a leading part in the total artistic production. Not so 


in Greek painting. No sooner had spatial depth been opened up than it 


was citcumscribed once more, and one might even say that true space 

was less important in the panel-pictures of the later period than the 
suggestion of it on a single plane had been in earlier monumental painting. 

For a long time it was thete only for the sake of the figures filling it. 

This much we may infer both from our literary sources and from all 

sotts of reminiscences, ranging from vase-piftures of the florid style Fig. 108 
to Pompeian wall-paintings of the early Empire; many details are still Fig. 118 
disputed. 

Painting is at its zenith when we find ourselves at last on the firm 
gtound of trustworthy copies after particular masterpieces: copies, or 
Stti@ly speaking, one copy, the Battle of Alexander. The monumental Fig. 121 
mosaic, over five feet broad, from Pompeii, itself belongs to a good 


7 


INTRODUCTION : MONUMENTAL PAINTING 


Hellenistic period: and it is almost certainly a faithful copy of a picture 

painted by the Attic master Philoxenos of Eretria for King Cassandet : 

the fidelity almost goes beyond the technical conditions of mosaic work. 

This pi@ure, says our chief authority, Pliny, was inferior to none—an 

invaluable testimony. So the monumental painting of the Greeks is not 

entirely lost. Cautious investigation has also enabled us to discern, 

through the veil of late Italic painting, the main features, sometimes more, 

Figs. 119- of several other important pi€tures from the great period. Finally, the 

ee 128) art of these Italic pi€tures themselves is the full inheritor of an art to which 

>" no field of pi&torial vision was wholly strange, even if some of them have 
been explored more fully by modern art. 

Summing up, one may say that Greek painting, in and after its classical 
bloom in the second half of the fourth century, was completely master 
of space, light and colour; completely, that means, as far as its 
general attistic purposes demanded. But these purposes led to certain 
limitations compared with modern art. In painting, as elsewhere, man 
temained the measure of all things to the Greeks, his shape and his inner 
life the paramount theme. This fundamental tendency in the whole 
intelle@ual life of the Greeks makes itself felt in all three departments of 
pi@orial expression. ‘The representation of space did not lead to a land- 
scape-painting independent of other kinds of painting and their peer 
in expression and even in form. Modest decorative pictures, from 
which man and his works were never absent, were the most that the 
Hellenistic period achieved in this respect, and the best landscape figure- 
pi€ures of the Imperial age do not rise above a side-scene-like kind of 
decorative landscape. ‘The epoch-making achievement lies in the prin- 
ciple, not in the exhaustion of the possibilities. 

The artistic treatment of light went-considerably farther: nor is 
this accidental, for the primaty use of lighting was to bring about a 
finished piGtorial rendering of the human form. From the human form, 
indeed, it almost immediately passed to the pi€ture-space, first through ~ 
the cast shadow, and gradually developed into an independent means — 
of effect. We possess examples of ingenious lighting from Hellenistic 
and Roman times. But here also the limitations and the distance from 
modern art are sensible. Since the lighting subserved the form—in 
composition almost as much as in modelling—it remained simple and 
clear, and a bright, equable light predominated. The Greek masters 
did not attempt to exhaust either the piftorial or the expressional values 
of lighting, such as have been familiar to us since the seventeenth centuty. 
As fat as we know, they did not take more than the first steps in that 


8 


INTRODUCTION : MONUMENTAL PAINTING 


direction. Light, however, subserves not only the rendering of form, 
but colouring as well. Now of all pictorial means of expression, colout 
appeats to have been developed farthest: and light participated. We 
shall find important examples from the earliest mosaics to the Campanian 
wall-paintings, and our literary tradition teems with references to subtleties 
of even weaknesses of colouring in painters, and with theories of colour 
ptopounded by philosophers. In Plato the theory is accompanied by 
the artist’s and poet’s delight in colour. The topic was treated in the 
theoretic writings of the artists themselves, and what we tead about 
colouts, light and air in the pseudo-Aristotelean tracts De Coloribus and 
De Audibilibus can hardly be independent of these writings. A great 
deal of it has a surprisingly modern ring, and shows that there was a 
highly developed theory corresponding to an artistic practice which 
we can still make out in its main features. The fact is not altered by the 
ingenious picturesqueness of certain explanations, which merely betokens 
the sensuous mind of the artist. It sounds like an echo of the develop- 
ment which took place, evidently not without struggles, in the course 
of the fourth century, when Xenokrates from his early Hellenistic stand- 
point attributes austerity of colouring to certain painters and adtual 
hardness to others: his standard was a perfectly free play of colour. 
But the limits to this rich and mature Greek colouring are shown by 
such Pompeian pictures as the Achilles in Skyros, full as it is of a real Fig. 123 
riot of colour: form, that is, once more, human form in especial, was 
preserved intact; colouring did not abolish drawing. 

We ate now ptepated to set foot upon the path which will lead us 
from the first creations of Greek painting to the last, from the crystal-like 
constructions of the geometric vases to the boundless horizon of the Odys- Fig 1 
sean landscapes from the Esquiline. The development occupies almost the Fig. 159 
whole of the thousand years before Christ, and its last offshoots reach into 
the Middle Ages. We have reason to believe that the great fundamental 
achievements of Greek painting have come down to us in an uninterrupted 
line. Even whete it outsoars the Greeks, the roots of our great proud 
painting are ultimately in Hellas. 


COMMENTARY 


HE organic development of Greek att does not begin until 

a thousand yeats after the arrival of the first Greeks in Hellas. 

In the second millennium the lot of the Greeks was that of 

evety young people which finds itself under the spell of a 

brilliant neighbouring civilisation. Their world was bathed 
in the beams of that strange and shining culture which had flowered at 
the gates of the East under the first rays of a European sun. The 
spitit of those earliest Europeans, the Cretans, who in a short space of 
time had soared from a ptimitive existence to an astonishing height 
of civilisation, presents a sharp contrast to that of the Greeks. The 
trend of their att, even their archite€ture, is thoroughly pictorial: that 
of Greek art is plastic, teCtonic and monumental. 

This spirit shows itself even in those Greeks who first imbibed deep 
draughts of Cretan influence. They took Cretan art as what it was, 
as a radiant adornment to life. Cretan art might adorn the Greek house 
and adorn it richly ; but it was not allowed to alter the fundamental shape 
of the house, cubic, clear and monumental. The Northern megaton 
with open porch in front—the prototype of the Greek temple—temained 
the dominant form even in the palaces of Argolis with all their Cretan 
splendour; and the great gate of the citadel of Mycenae beats double 
witness to its builders’ sense of the monumental, for the massive masonty 
is ctowned by a monumental stone relief set in the triangular void which 
relieves the pressure on the lintel—a pair of heraldic lions, after Oriental 
and Cretan models, which foreshadows the Greek pedimental groups 
tocome. It is the only piece of monumental sculpture in Creto-Mycenean 
civilisation : that hyphened term accurately describes the relation between 
Crete and Hellas. After the middle of the second millennium the Greek 
genius began to assert itself against the Cretan; the young Greek people 
was rising in its strength. | 

Then the collapse came. A great fresh wave of that movement of 
peoples which had brought the first Greeks to Hellas poured over the 
whole East-Mediterranean area and foamed right up to the Egyptian 
frontier. It was not a single tidal wave, but a slowly swelling tide with 
many successive breakers, the last of which remained in the memory of 
the Greeks as the Dorian invasion. When the sun of Homer rose out 


Io 


aa ee 


GEOMETRIC VASES 


of the darkness of this wild time, it shone over the ruins of Creto-Mycenean 
culture: but the new life of pure Hellenism grew up out of the ruins. 

It is only now, about the year 1000, that the story of Greek art proper 
begins. The first creation of Greek art was the geometric style, which Fv. 1 
takes its name from the forms used in its system of ornament, but the 
same conception of form which expresses itself in the ornament expresses 
itself also in the shapes of the vessels and utensils and in the abstract 
Stylisation of the figure-subjects. A primitive form of the style is uni- 
versal: but the Greeks developed it to a unique height and a unique 
severity, in which we can see the germ of idealistic classical art. The 
geometric style is not uniform throughout Greece, but exhibits dozens of 
local varieties, mirroring the political disunion of the country. Common 
to all, though seen at its richest and purest in the so-called Attic Dipylon 
Style, is the Greek feeling for pure form; for clarity and measure, for 
rhythm and symmetry, for perfect order and organic disposition. Here 
it reaches a degree of abstraction which is almost mathematical: its 
highest embodiments are the Doric temple and the statues of Polykletos, 
its highest intelletual expression the Pythagorean theory of numbers 
and the Attic philosophy of ideas, in which Plato demands an ideal art 
based on Order. The next and the decisive step is already prepared, 
the step to monumentality: there are no large statues yet, and even the 
temples were no more than half-primitive stru@tures far inferior to the 
ancient palaces of Mycenae or Tiryns: but our man-high amphora, 
which served as a sepulchral monument, is already on the verge of monu- 
mentality ; we feel that a sense of the monumental has grown up in this 
minor art, and that the structure and rhythm of the vase herald the great 
architecture to come. And Athens is already the spiritual leader. 

At the height of the style figure-subje&ts begin to appear, and side 
by side with vase-pictures and engraving on metal vessels we find in- 
dependent pictures on small clay tablets used for religious purposes. 
The representation on our sepulchral amphora is one of the most severely 
Stylised, and only by comparing it with a number of other pi€ures can 
we understand it thoroughly. The handle-areas and the reverse are 
but continuations of the main picture, separated from it for decorative 
reasons. The painting is pure silhouette, without any inner marking 
in the figures. The dead man lies on the bier, his kinsfolk, eighteen 
of them, mourning round him, the two end figures on the left shown 

3 to be men by their swords. The couch is not quite in the middle, though 
there are seven figures on either side: on the shorter right side a smaller 
figure takes the place of the filling-ornament, obviously a child, who 


: it 


ATTIC GEOMETRIC VASES 


takes hold of the couch; the foremost figures on either side grasp the 
covetlet ; both these ate rather smaller than the rest, from lack of space. 
Under the bier, as one would say at first sight, are four mourners, arranged 
symmetrically ; two sitting on chairs; two, women, perhaps kneeling 
on the ground. Since it was difficult to draw the legs in this position, 
the painter has indicated the clothing, as in the corpse, although as a 
rule the severe Dipylon style refuses to represent clothes. His mode of 
drawing is purely ideographic, not however from primitive naiveness 
but in conscious decorative étylisation, although the underlying principle 
is the primitive one of not attempting to render the appearance, but putting 
the figures together out of separate memory-images of the parts as seen 
in theit most effetive view and in simplified form. ‘This simplification 
opetates in two ways both here and in the statuettes. On the one hand, 
the forms crystallise into abstra@ mathematical shapes like the upper part 
of the woman who grasps her head with both hands: the lower half of 
an inverted triangle is filled in with colour, in the upper half an indication 
of the head is placed, and sometimes a bit of filling-ornament. On the 
other hand, the legs show a clear understanding of the organism. ‘Thus, 
in little bronze horses, body and head may be thin cylinders, but in the 
atched neck and the legs with their joints the essential forms are there, 
simplified and exaggerated, it may be, but grasped in their organic sig- 
nificance. This transference of simple forms and clear articulation 
from constructional and decorative art to figurework was of great impott- 
ance for the future of Greek att: but a long period of development was 
necessaty before the habit of exaggeration was overcome—the loud 
utterance of archaic art, an art which could only express itself in extremes. 
The huge thighs and calves with the fine joints, the wasp-waist and the 
broad shoulders held their ground in sculpture and drawing even longer 
than in archite@ure the flat, swaggy echinus and the sharply tapering 
column-shaft with compressed neck. 

On our amphora the picture in the midst of the ornament, despite 
its severe stylisation, has the ait of an intruder. And an intruder it was. 
In time the style became less severe, the pitures expanded and encroached, 


and in certain vases the ornaments serve metely as modest frames for the — 


pi@ures, while even the filling-ornament has disappeared. A state of 
affaits which did not become general until two hundred years later; one 
of those anachronistic anticipations of subsequent development which 
ate not very infrequent in the otherwise extraordinarily consistent course 
of Greek artistic history. 

The geometric style having exhausted all its own possibilities, the 


I2 


eae 
a eee, Sec a 


ORIENTALISING VASES 


impulse to a new development came from without. Greek civilisation 
was now faced by the critical problem in what relation it was to stand to 
Oriental civilisation, which seemed to be overwhelmingly superior. The 
seventh century decided whether Greek culture was to be an outpost of 
Oriental culture, or the foundation of European. Poets and thinkers, 
attists and craftsmen won the battle which was later fought out with arms 
at Marathon, Salamis and Plataea. By the time that the seventh century 
was nearing its close, a monumental art had been created: an att which 
was pute Greek for all its dependence upon Eastern influences, and which 
now set foot on the path which in two hundred years would lead it far 
beyond anything that the Orient or Egypt had known. The beginnings 
of monumental archite@ure and sculpture were accompanied by the 
beginnings of monumental painting, as we might infer even if scanty 
remains of such work had not been preserved on the metopes of Greek 
temples and in the mural decoration of Etruscan tombs: such remains 
confirm our literary references. ‘The details of the stylistic development 
ate easier to follow in the vase-paintings than in these scattered fragments. 

Here is an Attic mixing-bowl which betrays its geometric origin. Fig. 2 
The ground of the picture is still strewn with filling-ornaments. But the 
drawing has already acquired a certain amplitude and a liquidity of curve ; 
pure abstraction has given place to a distin@ approximation to nature ; 
and silhouette is supplemented by outline drawing and inner markings. 
The oriental lion, for all the childishness of the drawing, is impressive, 
and what is mote, boldly stylised. He is also big in proportion to the 
vase which he decorates: the monumental feeling of the new age is 
showing itself in vase-painting as well as elsewhere. ‘The geometric 
tradition is more strongly pronounced in a time-honoured subject, the 
chatiot procession. The artist means to represent pait-horse chariots, 
for there were no one-hotse chariots: he did not aim at the mattet-of- 
; fa& analytical completeness of his predecessors, but has gone to the other 
‘ extreme and given an exact profile view: the hither horse, like the hither 
wheel, completely eclipses the farther, and a simple and clear picture is 
thus obtained. 

From this earlier stage of the orientalising style we pass, with the next Figs. 3-4 
two pictutes, to its mature period, the second half of the seventh century ; 
the later of the two may even belong to the turn of the century. They 
come from the Cyclades, and the Style is called the Delo-Melian from the 
islands in which the vases ate principally found. Both pictures are 
from large amphorae which, like the Attic vase studied earlier, served as 
funeraty monuments; and hence the predominance of actual pictures 


aes |) lh sa 


13 


ier ob 


DELO-MELIAN VASES 


ovet the animal friezes which often reign supreme in the orientalising 
Style. The filling-ornament is still very dense, making one think of 
coloured textiles. A technical novelty is the use, side by side with the 
normal colours of vase-painting, of approximately natural colours : golden 
brown for men, white for women, both borrowed from monumental 
painting, in which clay tablets were often used. ‘The later picture is on 
the same level as the metopes of an old Aetolian temple ; and has advanced 
beyond the primitive, highly decorative drawing of the earlier work. 

Fig. 3 The eatlier pi€ture probably represents an important incident in the legend 
of the san@uary of Apollo at Delos: the god returning, accompanied by 
Hyperborean maidens, from the far north, his sister Artemis receiving 
him, the maidens raising their hands in greeting. The painter’s forte 
was decorative effet. The quadriga is a triumph of the same sense of 
form as inspires the bold spiral ornaments regular in this class of vase. 
The four horses are not rendered by layers of silhouettes one behind the 
other, but by free waving lines drawn parallel to the silhouette of the 
hithermost horse and a fanlike arrangement of four heads and three manes. 
The steeds are charaéterised as divine by wings. The wings have the 
sickle-shape which the Greeks adopted from the Hittites of Asia Minor. 
The horse-type underlies the rendering of the deer as well, and that is the 
only reason why the deer is bitted. For the deer the artist has used the 
type of the walking animal almost unaltered. There are geometric sut- 
vivals, and the animal frieze offers a naive alternation of old-fashioned 
and new-fangled geese. 

Fig.4 The later vase shows a gteat progress, but it also shows that no pro- 
gress is made without payment, and that the gain is also a loss. The 
magnificent decorative calligraphy of the earlier quadriga is gone; and 
the natural forms of the horses’ silhouettes, now disposed one beyond 
the other, with the expressive bend and toss of the heads—still visible in 
spite of the damaged surface—appeal to us far less strongly. For a new 
and perfeéted stylisation we must wait till the succeeding period. The 
subje&t is Herakles setting out with a bride, Deianeita rather than Iole. 
If his eye seems a ttifle wider open, and his brow a little raised, they 
indicate not momentaty anger but the character of the mighty hero ; 
and the strong hook of the nose has the same intention. The bride’s 
father has a milder air, and the lines of the female heads are tenderly felt. 
The athletic bodily forms are not seen so well here as in the second picture 
on the vase, where muscles and joints are tense, juicy and strong, especially 
in the legs ; here we see only the swelling thighs. There is still something 
of the ptimitive marionette-like quality of the earlier picture, but we are 


14 


PROTOCORINTHIAN VASES 


approaching the full perfection of archaic art ; and mythical representations, 
which begin at the end of the geometric style, then become common. 
Beside these large pictures we may set the masterpiece of contemporary Fig. 5 
miniature painting: a little perfume-vase four inches high, which is a 
teal miracle of technical care and archaic lovingness. It belongs to a 
class of vases made near Corinth, perhaps at Sicyon, and usually called 
*protocorinthian.’ The class begins in the geometric period, and the 
latest examples, simple but technically accomplished little pots, went on 
- till the end of the sixth century and spread over the whole ancient world. 
The tiny vase is coveted all over with plastic and pictorial decoration ; 
but the effect is not overloaded : the clarity of all the forms, their distiné& 
atticulation, and not least the happy gradation of proportions so that the 
main forms stand out with the secondary forms subordinated to them, 
make it into an organism which can be enjoyed as a whole. ‘The colour, 
save traces, has perished: the best-preserved part is the purple of the 
plastic lion. But the drawing is still perfectly visible, for even the finest 
details are engraved as if on metal. The technique is that of the black- 
figure style described in the Introduction ; it was in this Argive-Corinthian 
area that it developed. In the main picture, just as in the Delo-Melian 
vases, a polychromy borrowed from monumental painting plays its part. 
In this picture subject-matter and decorative rhythm work happily into 
each other, for strict alignment, with equal step, thrust, and guard, was the 
tule in actual engagements as long as the formation remained intaét. 
But the artist has gone farther and given a group of defeated warriors. 
The type of warrior composed of head and arm, shield and legs, is old ; 
the other new ; it exhibits the strength and intensity of archaic art fully 
developed ; and the effect of the side-view shield is cunningly obtained 
without true perspective. We are given a glimpse of the disciplined 
life of the aristocratic Dorian state, and to this life the chariot-race also 
belongs, with its stri&tly decorative deployment vivified by delightful 
individual traits. The driver of the leading chariot—the second in our 
pidute, which is tolled out wrongly—looks round: the space below 
his team is filled by terrified geese. Under the other teams, naively dis- 
tributed, is a hare hunt, as in the lowermost frieze. The motive is a 
favourite one in this style and is derived from Oriental art ; but here it is 
enlivened by a dog which has broken loose and become entangled in the 
leash. The power of the drawing culminates in the central group of the 
: larger animal frieze—a lion and a bull facing. 
We leave the Dorian world for the Ionian in the picture on a sarcophagus Fig. 6 
from Clazomenae at the entrance to the Gulf of Smytna. It was customary 


T5 


CLAZOMENIAN SARCOPHAGI AND VASES 


there in the sixth century not to lay the dead on a bier before interment, 
but to set him upright in a clay sarcophagus of special shape: a practice 
borrowed from Egypt. Such sarcophagi usually had no lid: at the 
interment they were covered with stone slabs. The broad edges which 
framed the dead offered a fine field for decoration. Excepting the rare 
polychromy, all the techniques known to vase-painting were employed, 
but adapted to the special technical conditions of sarcophagi; and com- 
monly two techniques occur side by side, a special style being associated 
with each—a significant illustration of the Greek practice of keeping the 
several species of art separate. In this juxtaposition a historical sequence 
also finds expression ; for the more modern style at the period takes pride 
of place at the head of the sarcophagus. In our picture we have animals 
of orientalising style below, and above, a black-figure battle-scene and 
two splendid he-goats. ‘The scene is thoroughly Homeric: two hetoes 
have driven to meet each other in their war-chariots, and as the chariots 
wheel off, they rush together for the single combat. ‘The decorative 
symmetty which is often pushed to meaninglessness in the sarcophagi, 
is here used very happily to represent an incident which is of its own 
nature symmetrical. The Ionian temperament reveals itself in the fiery 
movement of man and horse, the developed archaic style in the sureness 
and beauty of the drawing : we are now in the middle of the sixth century. 
The dogs under the horses are part of the old, originally Hittite, typology 
of East-Greek art; the cloth hanging from the shield is taken from 
Ionian custom ; such cloths wete used as a protection against the atrows 
of the Asiatics. 

Figs. 7-8 A widely distributed class of sixth-centuty vase is Clazomenian like 
the satcophagi. We figure a fragment and a reconstruction of the com- 
plete vase. The vase exhibits the strong decorative feeling of the Ionians 
in its main pi@ure no less than in the animals and monsters: the arrange- 
ment of the chorus of maidens is wholly ornamental. The picture was 
painted early in the sixth century, hence the still almost geometric tightness 
of the forms, the naive love of contrasts and exaggerations, and the angular 
yet effective movements. The heads are most delicate and surprisingly 
individual. Every one who knows Greece will be reminded of acquaint- 
ances from Athens or Smyrna. The painter is beginning to replenish 
the old-fashioned types by means of dite& observation. 

Fig.1z2 A somewhat riper masterpiece in this same manner is the chief specimen 
of a class of vases which without doubt originated in the Ionian Hast, but 
which settled in Etruria and gradually became barbarised. In the earliest 
Stage of the fabric we have the pure Ionian of immigrant masters. Our 


16 


IONIAN BLACK-FIGURED VASES 


picture is divided between the two shoulders of an amphora and inter- 
rupted by the spring of the handles; the eye cannot take in the whole 

scene at once. This freedom in the disposition of the pictures is not 
uncommon in vase-painting, but in later times it is seldom so abrupt as 
here: in later times one of the pi€tures usually contains the chief portion 

of the representation and is complete in itself, while the other is a not (Figs. 41, 
indispensable supplement—the vase has a front and a back. Divided #7 rs ag 
scenes also occur in the triglyph-metope frieze of Dorian temples. ‘The eek 
scene is the Judgment of Paris, rendered in the fashion of primitive art, 

with the figures ranged in a tow or in layets one behind another, with 

the decorative variety of colour dear to the Ionians, and with naive 
vigour and emphasis in the treatment of the subject. Three oxen, the 
shepherd’s dog, and the crow eating ticks: that gives the herd of Paris. 

The oxen are not browsing: the painter only wishes to count: one, 

two, three, that is, many oxen. ‘Their leftward turn is answered by the 
rightward turn of dog, crow, and Paris, the alert ones, who notice a 
remarkable procession approaching. In front of Hermes walks an old 

man who gteets Paris. In spite of the herald’s staff there is no doubt 

that the painter means him for Priam. He did not refle& that the omni- 
scient gods did not need to inquire in the palace before being able to find 

Paris in the mountain pasture. Hermes turns round to the goddesses : 
‘Look out! now’s the moment!’ Hera draws aside the matronly 
mantle which covets her head; Athena, virginally slim, with her elegant 
helmet-hat and her necklace, smiles and makes a gesture as if to say, 

: ‘Excuse me, heteIam!’ The spectator knows that her virginal charm 

will avail no more than the maturer attractions of Hera, and the artist 

has conttived to bring the ravishing potency of Aphrodite before our 

eyes. Working consciously to a climax, he makes her come last. She 
smiles and raises her right hand in greeting, with her left she modishly 
gathers her skirt round her ankles, and her skirt is transparent, and 
through it you see a splendid pair of sturdy legs. And then the saucy 

| snub nose, the smart turban, the dolman, the pointed red shoes—what 

| shepherd boy could resist such allurements ? 

The most important class of Ionian vases belong to a later Stage of Figs. 9-11 
development, date from the middle of the sixth century, and are related 

q to the sculpture of the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus. They are called 
Caeretan from the place where they were found, Caere in Etruria: they 

E ate nearly all water-pots, hydriai. They seem all to come from a single 
workshop, whether in Etruria or in the East is doubtful but matters little, 

for the style is pure Ionian. ‘The master is the first real, full-blooded 


Cc ny 


Figs, 10-11 


CAERETAN HYDRIAI 


personality we come actoss in vase-painting. Ornament and figures, 
the decorative and the representational, he shows the same easy mastery 
over all. Swelling succulent forms, controlled by tense contours ; delight 


in lively colouring, tempered by a fine feeling for balance of hues: these ; 


are his characteristics. There is a touch of grandeur not only in his forms, 
but in his relation to his subje€t-matter : thrilling illustrator as he can be, 
he yet stands above his work, and shows a superior humour even where 


the theme is not so burlesque as in the pi€ture of Herakles and Busitis. 


The Greeks related that this Egyptian monarch had the inhospitable 
custom of sacrificing stranded foreigners. This went on until one day 
Hetakles fell into his hands. At first Herakles pretended to submit: 
then he took vengeance. Our master has added a delicate jest to his 
vigorous treatment of the subject: for his pi@ure is a free variant of an 
Egyptian type of picture which represents Pharaoh marching proudly 
along with armfuls of small enemies. This is the painter’s finest work. 
The thick-set, red-brown giant chokes, smashes, and tramples six puny 
yattering Egyptians at once: at his feet squirms King Busitis, and the 
rest of the Egyptians have fled dithering to the altar and behind it. On 
the back of the vase the Nubian gendarmerie, armed with batons, hastens 
up, late. 

No other vase-pi€ture combines such a brilliant study of national 
chara@teristics with such gripping expressiveness and such convincing 


movement. The painter does not feel himself trammelled by the archaic — 


convention in which he works; he expresses his whole self, and yet 
remains decorative even in the principal pi€ture : the masses on the picture- 
surface ate in equilibrium, and the colour-patches too. To make this 
possible without losing clearness, he painted the Egyptians now buff 


with black hair, now black with red or buff hair, and one with a buff — 


gatment to contrast with the regulation white of his neighbour. This is 
not the only vase in which he varies his colours to suit his purpose. 
White, black and red, men, weapons, and garments, appeat in all sorts 
of combinations in a single pi€ture, for instance in the little hunting frieze 
which takes the place of the usual pattern-band under the picture of 
Busitis. The typical patterns—the great spreading tricoloured lotus 
flowers, palmettes, and spirals—play less part in the Busitis hydria than 
in the other Caeretan vases: the sprays on the shoulder are stylised with 
a freedom unparalleled between the Minoan period and the Hellenistic. 


Fig. 9 The picture of the pair-horse chariot is full of the same vitality. One can 


almost hear the men speak and the horses snort. Here also there ate 
traces of a foreign model, for the type of horse is Assyrian, ‘The second 


18 


SP NE ce ee Pai reey 
Ce et ye ee ee ee ae ee 


CHALCIDIAN VASES 


horse, and the flesh of the men, were white, but all that remains is the 
undetpainting. The edge of the standing man’s garment is already 
drawn in perspective with the utmost freedom and assurance. 
The Ionians of Euboea occupied an intermediate position between 
Tonia and Hellas. Chalcidian pottery, which flourished for a few decades 
in the middle of the sixth century, combines stylistic elements from both 
ateas. Brilliant in technique, and extremely decorative, it also offers 
one ot two mythological pictures of importance in themselves. As an Fig. 13 
example we may take the lost masterpiece which this publication may 
perhaps help to find in some private colle&tion. The fight for the body 
of Achilles is depi€ted with epic breadth, and with names appended in 
the fashion of the Greek homeland. The Trojans have fastened a rope 
to the heel pierced by the arrow of Paris, and Glaukos is pulling it, as if 
to compel us to notice that curious trait in the saga, Achilles’ heel: in 
naive contradiGtion to it a second arrow is sticking in the dead man’s 
chest. But Glaukos does not get far, for Ajax rushes at him and pierces 
him through, so that he writhes like the Persian in the mosaic of Alex- (Fig, 121) 
ander. Neither the retreating archer Paris can help him, nor Aeneas, 
who, too late, dashes up with a comrade, for Athena the battle-maiden 
Stands by Ajax—in the literal sense of the word; not interfering, but 
Standing there like an idol, with the great snakes of her aegis curling 
é round her; her presence, her will, sufficing to assist Ajax. Two more 
watriors, one of them collapsing from a shot in the neck, complete the 
picture of the mellay. Contrast is furnished not only by the motionless 
figure of Athena, but also by a little separate scene: Diomede, slightly 
wounded, is standing out, and Sthenelos, who has laid his shield and 
helmet down, binds him up. The whole picture is drawn with a sure 
hand in swelling, yet tensely contoured forms, and with great skill in 
rendering movement. A peculiarity of the style is the helmeted heads 
seen from the front; and the body of Achilles displays a concession to 
mete appeatance which amounts to a breach with all the principles of 
ptimitive drawing. Both his arms are concealed, and one of his feet is 
in three-quarter view. Yet this picture more than any other stamps the 
master as a true atchaic artist. ‘ The crowd of incidents, the earnestness 
and distinétness of the rendering,’ the priceless ingenuousness which at 
the very turn of the tide shows us a hero methodically tying up a sore 
finger, all this is the youth of Greek art in all its simplicity. 
| Corinthian pottery is related to Chalcidian, but is much more important Figs. 14-17 
_ inits period. It is true that the vast majority of the thousands of Corinth- 
jan vases found all over the ancient world are purely decorative produéts 


9 


VOC my Sa | eee 


ee eee ee ee ee 


CORINTHIAN PLAQUES 


of the Orientalising frieze-Style, and artistically speaking mass produéts. 
They dominated the world’s markets in the seventh century and circulated 
widely in the sixth. Side by side with these an important pidure style 
bloomed in the first half of the sixth century, originating in the seventh. 
An isolated trace of it at a later petiod shows that it did not succumb 
immediately to Attic competition; but from the middle of the sixth 
century it pines away. Monumental painting flourished in Corinth 
simultaneously, and was even said to have been invented there. Its 
influence upon Corinthian pottery is unmistakable, and we even possess 


Figs. 16-17 an intermediate term in the hundreds of painted clay tablets which once 


hung as dedications in a sanftuary. ‘They do not differ gteatly, in essen- 
tials, from the clay metopes, likewise Corinthian work, of a temple in 


Aetolia. As they often hung free, for instance from the branches of | 


trees in a sacted grove, they are usually painted on both sides. The 


Fig. 16 subjects are mostly figures of gods, either single or in such groups as ate 


called sante convetsazioni in modern art ; and scenes from the life of the 
dedicants. These wete for the mote patt manual workers, sometimes 
sailors, as might be expected in the principal industrial and maritime city 
of its time: the dedications of the upper classes were more costly. The 
most striking scenes ate the pottery and foundry scenes: the two ate not 
always easy to tell apart, for potter’s oven and blast-furnace, clay-pit and 
coppet-mine are much alike. 

A piaure like ours reminds the archaeologist of his own experience 
as an excavator: for the lumps of stone or clay are being drawn up to the 
surface in just such baskets as are used to-day for the earth and the finds. 
The seétional rendering of the pit is truly archaic in its distin€tness and 


completeness. Everything is there, the pit, the men, the tools, and not — 


least, the refreshment which is let down in an amphora by ropes. The 
herculean chief workman (who bears signs of being a barbarian slave) 
plying his pickaxe manfully, the others colleGing the yield into baskets 
—all this is skilfully rendered by the simplest means, with everything 


unessential omitted. In spite of the flat treatment and the scanty ait-— 


space above the heads of the standing figures, we receive a complete 
impression of space and landscape: the device of cutting off the piéture 
at the frame stimulates the imagination and contributes to this impression. 
It meant a great deal to the artist to give so much landscape and to dis- 
pense with the standing-line common to all the figures : it is the beginning 


(Fig. 159) of the long way which leads to the Odyssean landscapes of the Esquiline. 


This was a bypath of Greek painting. The high toad was reserved 
almost exclusively for figures of man and animal: everything else was 


20 


wie Sa 


CORINTHIAN VASES 


subordinated to them, even space, which was only there in order to be 

filled with figures. Of figure-painting also there are important specimens 

in Corinthian pottery, which show the influence of monumental painting. Figs. 14-15 
The brightly coloured pictures of monumental painting are deftly trans- 

lated into the decorative technique of the vase-painter. By copious use 

of white, red, and often reserved outline drawing, the vase-painter con- 

trived, even in crowded scenes with strong, irregular movement, to arrange 

a number of silhouettes one beyond the other without becoming confused 

of even undecorative. ‘Thus arose the ‘ space without depth ’ mentioned 

in the Introduétion—the archaic non-perspective variety of what the 
Alexander mosaic uses all the devices of mature painting to achieve, (Fig. 121) 
the filling of space with organic form. 

The crater in our small reproduction shows us a battle like that in the Fig. 15 

mosaic. Where all the figures are warriors, the half-compulsory, half- 
decorative alternations of colour stand in striking contradiction to real 
life. In another vase of the same shape, the Amphiaraos krater, the Fig. 14 
translation into the colout-world of vase-painting is more consistent. 
The pictures correspond in a curious degree to the description of a master- 
piece of the cabinet-maket’s art, a daedal chest which legend connected 
with the Corinthian tyrant Kypselos, and which was seen by Pausanias 
in the Temple of Hera at Olympia seven hundred years later. The chest 
had next to each other the same two pictures —quite unconnected in subject 
—as our crater and another vase made in a different part of the world, 
an Italo-Ionian vase like Fig. 12. Obviously some common traditional 
model must have been at the back of all three. The chest of Kypselos 
seems to have borne a further resemblance to our crater in its medium of 
expression : it was of cedar wood with inlays of ivory, ebony and gold: 
in the vase red takes the place of gold. Pidorially, the most interesting 
part of our vase is the effective hurly-burly of the chariot-race at the 
funeral games of Pelias. No beholder, unless he counts them laboriously, 
will notice that the horses’ heads do not correspond exactly to the number 
of legs. A clear, decorative effet at a distance, to our eyes a certain 
spatial effect as well, has been obtained by putting the four white and 
piebald horses nearest the eye. Our reproduétion includes the prizes, 
huge bronze tripods, but omits the judges sitting in front of them. 

The other pi€ture gives a saga which was treated by the epic at one stage 
in the spiritual development of Greece, and by tragedy at another: by 
epic as an adventute, by tragedy as a psychological confliét. It is a parallel 
to the tale of Orestes. The seer Amphiataos had sworn to submit to the 
atbitration of his wife Eriphyle in disputes with his wife’s brother Adrastos. 


21 


Fig. 18 


CORINTHIAN VASES 


When Adrastos was collecting a band of heroes for his son-in-law Poly- 
neikes, to conquer Thebes, they tried to win Amphiaraos. Amphiaraos 
refused, for he knew that the expedition would be his last. ‘Then Poly- 
neikes bribed Eriphyle with the magic necklace of Harmonia, and she 
forced Amphiaraos to set out on the fatal road. The burden of blood- 
revenge, and thereby the curse of the matricide, fell on his son Alkmaion. 
Attic vase-painters, in the high period of Attic tragedy, drew from this 
saga psychological piftures classical in their simplicity : Eriphyle wavering 
between desire and fear as the seducer holds up the glittering gawd; 


Amphiataos taking leave of his little son, who shyly and hesitatingly — 


receives the sword of vengeance. Our own painter relates the story 
with epic breadth and with all the naiveness of archaic art. We ate in 
the courtyard of the palace: the palace front, naturally but man-high, 
appears behind the women. ‘The second building beside it is to be thought 
of as really opposite: it is the gateway of the courtyard, the Propylon. 
The chariot is ready to start: the driver receives the parting draught, 
and a lad stands at the horses’ heads to keep them still. Amphiataos 
mounts the car with a great stride. The turn of his head, and the drawn 
sword in his hand, tell us what has taken place. | 
Overcome by anger, he would have punished the traitress, who is 
standing behind her children holding the huge necklace well in view, so 
that the speétator shall remember the story. But the children beseech 
the father to spate their mother: the youngest boy has his hands held 
out in entreaty by the girl on whose shoulders he sits. So Amphiaraos 
lets the doom which he foresees take its course. An old man is sitting 
apart. His name does not make what we see any clearer. He grasps his 
head in sorrow, and his sitting on the ground, inappropriate to his costume, 
also indicates that he forebodes or knows the event. Perhaps Amphiaraos 
has enjoined him to bring up Alkmaion to take vengeance. All this was 
not enough for the painter: to his broad easy mode of narration belong 
the accessories also, with which the laé little empty corner can be filled 
up so nicely, and still more life and vatiety be brought into the picture. 
So he added the hare with which the children play, the hedgehog which is 
said to eat fleas, the lizards which scutty along the walls, the snake which 
is still venerated in Greek houses as a spirit, the less popular, scorpion, 
the bird in the air, and last of all the owl on the high bent-up end of the 
chariot-pole (you have to know that, for the owl looks as if he were sitting 
on the neck of one of the horses), Happy springtime of Greek art ! 
_A picture on a Laconian cup is filled with the same spirit. This 
widespread class of vases has been proved by excavation to be Laconian, 


22 


A ee Say ee oe WOR a ON 


ill wel ae teeta i at ats) I 
PR ee OP it ge, a 


te ee ea Be args z ; 
Bae tiie TM i SON I cL Es oo yin 


ue ath "oe hse. Ue : 
DF Fe ets a ee NE 


LACONIAN VASES 


although it is possible that there were branch establishments in the African 
colony Cyrene. On the deck of a ship, under an awning, we see King 
Arkesilas of Cyrene, probably the second of the name. He is superin- 
tending the weighing and lading of the silphion plant, prized as a spice, 
and a royal monopoly. The painter has made skilful use of the round 
of the cup. By cutting off a segment he has obtained a straight baseline, 
the deck, and below it the lading-room seen in seétion: only the overseer 
is a bit crowded. The balance hangs from the same yard to which a 
cotner of the awning is attached. Birds are sitting on it, and an ape— 
it is in Africa—and a great Stork sails past with extended legs. The 
workmen are weighing, packing, and hauling with all their might ; and 
one of them is reporting to the King. The King sits on a graceful 
folding-stool under which his hunting-leopard lies. He holds a shapely 
sceptte, and his head with the long long hair of the aristocrat is protected 
by an elegant hat of the shape which we find, three hundred years later, 
on the heads of Tanagran maidens : it was called tholia, from the awnings 
of circular buildings: to us, what with the long hair, it looks rather 
Chinese. There was still a spot free: the painter forgot the part which 
he had been playing, and drew a lizard—climbing in the air, for here we 
can hardly supply the usual courtyard or house-wall. 

This admirable scene from life in a Greek colonial harbour looks like 
the dite& transcript of an experience, seems to be due to freshest observa- 
tion. It is so: and yet the pidorial type is borrowed, even to details, 
from an Egyptian prototype of a far different, far more serious tone: a 
Last Judgment. The borrowing goes even farther than in the picture 
of Busiris. What matters is not what the Greek has borrowed, but (Fig. 10) 
what he has made out of it. This pi€ture may be described as the last 
work of the Orientalising style. Modest as it is, artistically speaking, it 
shows Gteek art tipe to dispense with its teacher. It had long been 
Striving with its own powers towards higher ends. 

In Attic vase-painting, which in the course of the sixth century quickly Figs. 19-67 
rose to predominance and eventually to sole rule, archaic draughtsmanship 
reached a perfection which, judging from the sculptures preserved, was 
not sutpassed by the monumental painting of the time. A modern 
master-draughtsman, Max Klinger, who practised the monumental arts 
as well, rightly maintains that the vases of the severe red-figure style 
wete equal to the best works of their time: he calls them ‘ works of art 
in the best sense of the word,’ and lays stress upon the independence of 
the vase-pitures with respect to monumental art. ‘In monumental 
att, for great purposes gteat forms unerringly elaborated in detail; in 


+3 


ATTIC BLACK-FIGURED VASES a 


the smaller life of the vases abundant sensuousness, humour, and enjoy- 
ment, suggested with the utmost economy of line.’ He is speaking of 
the red-figure style: but the black-figure style had already accomplished 
Figs. 19-26 marvels. ‘This is not the place to follow its gradual development out of 


the orientalising style, instru€tive as it would be to observe the violent ‘ 
ferment into which the gifted and passionate artists of Athens were thrown a 
by the struggle between the foreign influences and the national charaéter. ner 


By the beginning of the sixth century this preliminary phase was overt, a. 
and the Attic archaic style had settled down. It was a second revelation 
of that blend of perfe& craftsmanship with true feeling for rhythm and 
symmetry which had created the Dipylon style two hundted years before. 
The produét of that hundred years’ struggle to master the Oriental elements 
was as pute as the clash had been violent. ‘The Greek quality maintained 
itself intact, and the Attic in all essentials. 

We must content ourselves with one or two characteristic examples of 
the style, without attempting to illustrate its variety. The same high sense 
of style which had led to the naive ovet-stylisation of Dipylon draughts- 
manship showed the black-figure painter what the true nature of the 
black-figure style was: the treatment of form must be ornamental, the 
execution as fine and accurate as could be, and the charaéter of the work 
as a whole must be stri€tly decorative. Such an artistic intention, appro- 
ptiate to the early archaic stage of art, could not but lead to a confli@ 
as time went on: for it was necessarily anti-naturalistic, whereas the 
general tendency was towards an ever-increasing apptoximation to natute. 
Complete mastery must be attained over natural forms before a new, 
classical stylisation could begin. As the artists were not tefle@tive aca- 
demicians but Greek craftsmen with unblunted senses, theit work has all 
the charm of the youthful struggle between stylistic formulas and observa- 
tion of nature. Late archaists, that is to say, imitators of long-past stages 
of development, ate usually intolerable: but there is nothing more — 
delightful than the work of these artists, who in the heart of the atchaic 
period controlled their growing power of naturalistic expression in order 
to retain the splendidly decorative formulae of an eatliet age and to make 
full use of the specific qualities of the technique in which they wete 
working. Hence the atchaic severity of style did not turn into the empty 
affectation of the petrified traditionalist, but into the conscious mannerism — 
of the ‘ virtuosi of the decorated surface,’ the last consequence of that — 
refusal to follow in the footsteps of monumental painting which had led 


to the abandonment of naturalistic polychromy in favour of the black- 
figure technique. 


a ae 
a Sane oe ee Pe. a 
ek Bs PET et 


24 


ATTIC BLACK-FIGURE: KLITIAS AND ERGOTIMOS 


At the beginning of this movement stands a krater in the Museum Fig. 19 
of Florence, painted by Klitias in the workshop of Ergotimos, and known 
as the Frangois vase from the name of its discoverer. Here, not long 
before the middle of the sixth century, we find not only the black-figure 
Style, but the archaic gift of narrative, both fully developed and exercised 
with the highest art. The decoration of the chest of Kypselos must have 
been very similar ; covered nearly all over with rows of pi€tutes which 
untoll a whole saga-book before our eyes. From the decorative point 
of view, it might be maintained that this is too much of a good thing, 
and that the artist would have been wiser to restrict himself as Exekias 
and others did later. This obje&tion applies not to Klitias but to that (Figs. 20, 
whole species of early archaic art to which his masterpiece belongs. He 2% 25) 
took this over-opulence for granted: in other vases he shows that he 
could decorate more spatingly. The Francois vase itself shows a highly 
conscious sense of decoration. The severe symmetry and rhythmic 
alignment which prevail in the neck-friezes, and which are traceable even 
in the main pi€tures although these are of their nature less regular, are 
not due merely to the general level of development which the art of 
composition had reached at the time; for one of the neck-pictures on 
the reverse, and the small frieze on the foot of the vase, are much freer 
in composition and movement. But it was only in inconspicuous places 
that the painter allowed himself such freedom. 

The drawing is as severe as the composition: tight and definite, 
with a slight propensity to straight lines and sharp corners—there are 
still vestiges of geometric notions of form, most conspicuous in the horses 
—but at the same time markedly trim and elegant ; the details of incredible 
finish, even to the almost microscopic friezes in the decorated bands of 
cettain garments. Our reproduction of the vase is not sufficient for close 
Study, and we shall confine ourselves to enumerating the subjects. The 
ptincipal frieze is taken up with the great procession of the gods to the 
wedding of Peleus and Thetis, whose house can just be seen on the extreme 
tight of our illustration. One of the chief exploits of Peleus was the 
Calydonian boar-hunt, which is depicted on the upper part of the neck, 
while a2 momentous deed of his son Achilles, the slaying of Troilos, 
appears in the lowest picture-frieze. Achilles is pursuing the boy, who 
was coming to the fountain to water his horses, and has almost overtaken 
him. On the life of Troilos, an oracle said, depended the fate of Troy, 
and his death also sealed the doom of Achilles, for he slew the lad at the 
altar of Apollo. That is probably why Ajax appears on the handle carry- 
ing the body of Achilles. The neck-picture shows the chariot-race at 


D 25 


ATTIC BLACK-FIGURE: AMASIS AND EXEKIAS 


the funeral games of Patroclus, and thus fits into the series of Peleus and 
Achilles pi€&tures which fill the whole obverse of the vase as well as the 
main frieze right round: this shows which side is the obverse and which 
the reverse. On the reverse Klitias celebrates his local hero Theseus and 
the craftsman god Hephaistos. The frieze on the foot represents the 
humorous battle of the Pygmies with the Cranes, and stands in the same 
relation to the heroic subjeéts on the rest of the vase as the Battle of Frogs 
and Mice to the great epics. The heraldic animal frieze is purely decora- 
tive, and there is not much more than an undertone of religious feeling 
in the demons on the handles. 

Fig.20 | Somewhat later, a true mid-sixth-century work, is an amphora by the 
mastet Amasis. His Egyptian name, and numerous Ionian elements 
in his style, point to his having been one of those immigrant Ionian crafts- 
men who were induced to settle in the Athens of Peisistratus by Solon’s 
enactments in favour of foreigners. He does not belie his origin; but 
he has adapted himself completely to the Attic style. The perfe&ion 
of his technique enables him to achieve extremely decorative effets, and 
his drawing is firm and sure. Higher artistic values are not to be looked 
for in him. More than once he uses a group which must be derived 
from monumental painting, two friends with their arms round each other’s 
necks—in our picture two nymphs hastening towards Dionysos, with 
ivy-sprays, a small stag, and a hare, in their hands. Thanks to the orna- 
mental character of the drawing, figures fuse with pattern into a brilliant 
and uniform decorative scheme. ‘Three generations later, another Attic 

(Fig. 80) vase-painter drew a similar group. Whether we are thinking of art or of 
human nature, there is a world of difference between the two pictutes : 
in these years the European spirit had awakened to complete consciousness, 
and had reached a degree of maturity which from the point of view of 
pure humanity it has never surpassed. 

Beside the Atticised Ionian Amasis stands Exekias as the purest 
Figs. 21-22 teptesentative of the Attic spirit. His masterpiece, the amphora in the 
Vatican, belongs to the third quarter of the sixth century. It is supple- 

Fig. 23 mented here by a fragment from the rim of a cauldron. These specimens 
ate not sufficient for a real understanding of Exekias, but unfortunately 
we cannot linger over individual masters. The works of his maturity, 
in which he pays homage to the fair Onetorides, rank, within the limits 
of theit kind, among the highest achievements not only of the black-figure 
Style, but of the whole art of the time. It is not likely that contemporaty 
wotks of monumental painting stood higher in artistic essentials. It is 
true that as in all early creative periods, Greek archaic art stood rooted 


26 


rere eg 


: 


ATTIC BLACK-FIGURE: EXEKIAS 


in a handicraft of wonderful excellence, but it would be misleading to 
refuse altogether to distinguish between ‘ handicraft ’ and‘ art.’ Although 
the margin is a floating one, yet nobody who is sensitive to distin@ions 
will misunderstand us if we say that Amasis was an excellent craftsman, 
but that Exekias, who was originally no more than that, grew into a still 
better, an unsurpassed craftsman, and at the same time into a true artist. 
A severely archaic artist, of course, and not to be measured by the modern 


- Standard of originality, but by the standard of his own time, by strength 


of feeling and power of expression, both as a master of form and as an 
illustrator. His works bear traces, indeed, of that manneristic confli& 
to which we have already alluded, so that complete harmony was not 
vouchsafed to them. The combination of Attic austerity and Attic 
Charis was not yet quite organic: in places they still form a mixture 
rather than a compound. But the synthesis is so far advanced that no 
Ionian vase can match them for artistic ripeness. It is not only in decora- 
tiveness that the Caeretan hydriai fall short of Exekias : their redundance 
in form and expression has something sensibly Asiatic about it when 
compated with the best works of Exekias, like an early Ionian leaf orna- 
ment set beside an Attic. One detects in Exekias not only the light 
crystal-clear atmosphere of Attica, but the immemorial legacy of the 
geometric style. Yet tight and rigid though his form is, it is none the 
less full of budding life. 

The Vatican amphora, like the Francois vase before it, is a high-water 
matk of the art of its time. To appreciate the shapes of the vases is no 
part of our task; but here, for the sake of the pictures, an exception 
must be made. The full-bellied amphora meets us here in unsurpassable 
perfe&tion—aunsurpassable because it is essentially an archaic shape which 
could not be accommodated to the classical idea of form. Hete, as the 
Greeks say, it found its eidos; the idea at which the development had 
been aiming has been attained. This matter cannot be discussed further 
at present, but a comparison may serve to make it clear. Greek feeling 
for form is so strong and general that quite different shapes can be com- 


(Figs. 9-11) 


Fig. 21 


pated. The Francois vase, in spite of the metallic rigidity of its lines, (Fig. 19) 


has a comfortable breadth and fulness which is ultimately derived from 
the same spirit as the epic breadth of its pictorial narrative: it recalls 
the heavy bellying forms of the early Doric capital. The amphora of 
Exekias, on the other hand, strives upwards, tight and elastic, the 
high-set swelling of the body and the wide mouth contouring it with a 
sptingy double curve. In Attica a like feeling for form and life took 
hold of the Doric capital also; in its steeper curve the Attic sense of 


=a 


Fig. 22 


ATTIC BLACK-FIGURE : EXEKIAS 


freedom rebels as it were against the heavy pressure of the Dorian mode. 
This was the first step towards the later Attic Doric of the Parthenon, 
in which a sudden elongation of the proportions substituted light aspira- 
tion for firm-fixed rest. Once we have acquired a feeling for the shape 
of our amphora, we realise the decorative value of the principal pi@ture, 
Ajax and Achilles playing the five-line game. The heroes bend anxiously 
ovet the board. Ajax calls three; Achilles four. The composition is 
just far enough removed from absolute symmetry not to seem stiff. We 
mentally complete the arc which swings over heads and backs to a uniform 
cutve crowned by the crest and adapting itself to the curvature of the vase. 
The picture is an ornament which clarifies and emphasises the effect of 
the shape; and the counter-diagonals of spears and shields play their 
part. On the other hand, the painter has no desire to fill the space full: 
the voids are enlivened by fine straight inscriptions only. Only so could 
the composition produce its effe@. ‘The representation makes us ask 
ourselves why the heroes have sat down at the gaming-table in almost 
complete armour, with spears in their hands ; and the exuberantly patterned 
cloaks worn over the atrmour—tmasterpieces of the gravet’s att—catch the 
eyeatonce. Nowa later pi@ure shows this oft-repeated group surrounded 
by the tumult of battle, and the answer therefore seems clear: the heroes 
ate on outpost-duty, and are whiling the time away—-so successfully that 
they do not hear the alarm and the Trojan attack. The origin of the scene 
is evidently a poem, perhaps a monumental pidture as well. The drawing 
speaks for itself, but there is one point to which we must call attention, 
the happy gradation of large and small forms. Even the miraculous 
miniatute work of the cloak-patterns is absolutely free from pettiness. 
The picture is a masterpiece of archaic art. 

The other picture is a delightful aristocratic family idyll. We can 
understand it without the help of the mythical names, which tell us that 
the subject is the Dioscuri with their parents. Castor is returning home 
from some expedition, His mother Leda offers him a flower, just as 
when one entets a Greek house to-day; his father Tyndareos strokes 
the magnificent thoroughbred, who being sensitive puts his ears back ; 
Polydeukes pets the dog. A little servant brings a chair with a change of 
clothes on it, and an oil-vessel ; for Castor will be taking a bath. As 
to the drawing, we will point out only the manneristic contrast in the 
treatment of the drapery: Leda’s patterned peplos is still foldless, but 
the mantles have plenty of folds. The composition, made up of verticals 
and horizontals in simple symmetry, does not stand in the same relation 
to the vase as the pi€ture on the obverse: here the figure-ornamentation 


28 


ATTIC BLACK-FIGURED VASES 


follows, like so many sutface-lines, the whole curvatute of the vase- 
sutface, at the cost of its visibility as a whole pi€ure: it subordinates 
itself. 

We pass into a different world with the little pi€ture of ships, two out Fig. 23 
of five which decorated the rim of a mixing-vessel inside. It is as if the 
ships floated on the contents of the vase. The sails have perished with 
the upper ledge of the tim. ‘The ships are fifty-oaretrs, penteconters, 
the simplest form of the ancient man-of-war, which has survived, apart 
from the ram, with all its slim and mobile elegance in the Venetian gondola. 

The Greek man-of-war is as beautiful as it is high-bred. One is tempted 
to compare it with Castor’s noble racehorse. Exekias shows his art by 
his wise restraint in not finishing off the heads of the rowers. 

Neat miniature pictures of this kind are mostly found on drinking- Figs. 24-25 
cups of a special class, which were made in many workshops, by Exekias 
as well as by Klitias and Ergotimos, Ergotimos’ son Eucheir, and others. 

In the later sixth century this class lost its distin@ive chara&er, though 

its more or less degenerate descendants go on for a long time. Thete 

is often no pictorial decoration at all, the painter contenting himself with 

the ornamental effect of carefully written signatures, short drinking- 
posies, or unmeaning rows of letters. "The same sparseness of decoration 
appeats in the little groups of two or three figures like that on a cup 
painted by Anakles in the busy workshop of Nikosthenes. On each Fig. 25 
side, Herakles attacking the hydra ; on one side the local nymph is added. 

Small and neat though it is, the picture is as expressive as it is decorative. 

Our second cup is the work of a most spirited painter, Glaukytes. One Fig. 24 
of his cups is pictureless, but here he has gone to the opposite extreme, 

for the frieze is filled to bursting with a wild battle-scene. This seem- 

ingly promiscuous medley is arranged, clarified, and made into effective 
decoration by the sure hand of a master in composition. ‘Three chariots 

at the ends and in the middle provide resting-places for the eye, and these 
bigger patches of colour pull the welter of small forms together: the 
foundered horse in the middle serves the same purpose. In spite of the 

small scale, thete is nothing of the miniature about the picture: it has a 
distiné& touch of grandeur. 

We conclude our survey of the black-figure style with a picture which Fig. 26 
takes us to the verge of monumental att. It is one of the slabs of a frieze 
which decorated an Attic sepulchral monument in the form of a building. 

The work was a kind of combination of a continuous frieze and a series 
of pi€tures. The several slabs were apparently separated from each other 
by small wooden borders covering the joins. The pictures represent the 


> Zz 
; 9 


Pigs, 27-67 


ARCHAIC RED-FIGURED VASES 


body being laid on the bier, the gathered mourners, the harnessing of 
the funeral cart, the procession in formation and on the way. The 
fragmentatiness makes many points doubtful, but broadly speaking one 
may say that the artistic method of the Parthenon frieze—the representa- 
tion of a procession from preparation to arrival—is here foreshadowed, 
here in the middle of the sixth century ; and we also find the corners 
emphasised, as in the Parthenon, by figures of pillar-like effe& facing the 
procession. Single elements of this kind can be found earlier: Klitias 
has a straggler hastening up in his dance of Theseus, and as early as the 
seventh century the motive of the west side of the Parthenon frieze is 
anticipated in the masterpiece of protocorinthian painting, where the last 
wattiors rush up to join the line, while others are still arming. A hundred 
years later we find this motive in the chariot parade on the walls of an 
Etruscan tomb. ‘The slab which we illustrate offers none of these signifi- 
cant conne@tions. It is a composition complete in itself—the gathering 
of the mourning women, at which the orphan child is handed round, just 
as ina Greek house to-day. The black-figure style is seen in all its severity 
and decorative force. Subsequently it grew looser and looser, and in the 
course of the general evolution to freer stylistic forms it became estranged 
from its true nature, which was bound up with the severe archaic style. 
We therefore follow it no further, but turn to the new style which in the 
last third of the sixth century rose swiftly to a magnificent height—the 
red-figure style. 

We have already spoken of it more than once: the technique is 
described in the Introduction, and its prevailing artistic tone at the begin- 
ning of our survey of Attic pottery. Its essential difference from the 
black-figute style is due to the black-figure being the style of the severe 
atchaic period, while the red-figure is the most characteristic creation and 
the perfe& expression of the mature and late archaic period. The in- 
trinsic difference between the two shows itself even in the subjeéts. In — 
the black-figure style artistic considerations had no particular influence 
upon the choice of subje&. The traditional repertory of types offered so 
large a sele@ion and such a field for variations that it satisfied painters 
of all tendencies ; unless they definitely turned off into the new paths of 
the red-figure style; but what the black-figure style adopted from the 
red-figure was as little, compared with the mass of old, as the influence of 
the black-figure style on the early red-figure compared with the new. 
It is true in the main that the two styles stood in a different relation to their 
subject-matter, although not only were they in contaé for more than half 
a century, but the red-figure style, in Greek fashion, avoided a violent 


30 


ARCHAIC RED-FIGURED VASES 


breach and took over and presetved much that was old. What we have 
hete is an aspect of a development in the history of att which refle@s in 
many facets the same general development in the history of the spirit : 
the ptogtess towards greater freedom as compated with the manifold 
restrictions of the early archaic style. The change of technique was 
intended to facilitate freer draughtsmanship after the manner of monu- 
mental painting. The purely artistic problems of monumental painting 
could now take far stronger hold upon the vase-painter than in the age 
when art was predominantly decorative. The step was not unlike the 
still greater step from the purely decorative orientalising style to the 
black-figure picture-style. The problems of form themselves—the desite 
for nakedness and for new kinds of movement—-influenced the choice of 
subject ; and the intellectual tendency of the time cleared the way. The 
new style saw things from a much greater human proximity, and this 
not only led to a vastly increased interest in subje€ts from everyday life 
which were lovingly studied even to the smallest and most insignificant 
detail, but even influenced the mythological representations. To the 
Greek, myth and life were not two incompatible worlds, but interwoven 
patts of a single reality. The early archaic style, like the travesties in 
poetry from Homer onwards, shows us many a naively human trait in 
the life of the gods ; in the Francois vase, for example, Athena shows her 
contempt for Ares who had failed to bring Hephaistos back to Olympus : 
but on the whole the atmosphere is that of some solemn fun@tion ; and 
this atmosphere is retained in the later black-figure style. In the new style 
the gods behave more like human beings, preferring decent comfort to 
stiff processions, and we see them not only slaying giants as of old, but 
also pursuing the daughters of men. ‘The change in the representations Fig. 55 
of Herakles is significant. His chief labours, repeated over and over 
again in the black-figure style, pass into the background, and one of the 
new scenes is the homely tale of Herakles the unwilling schoolboy and the Figs. 66-67 
unhappy fate of his teacher. 

But the new spirit finds its most diredt, and in the ripe archaic period 
its Strongest, expression in the purely human. Life in the palaestra and 
under arms, drinking, love-making, home-life—in the severe red-figure 
Style these things are rendered with that frank candour and detailed 
observation which is possible only at one period in the history of any art— 
just before the bloom of the classical age. The classic style is already 
conscious selection and restri€tion; while baroque realism lacks the 
atchaic simplicity, and moreover is based on the formal achievements 
of the classical style. It is true that earlier archaic art had treated the same 


31 


ARCHAIC RED-FIGURE: ANDOKIDES 


subjects and had dealt with all sorts of human activities: in the too 
human, patticularly, where no type was law, some of its efforts are distinétly 
expressive. But these old-fashioned works ate nothing to the multitude 
of new ted-figured representations, all incomparably richer and more 
powerful, both in form and expression, than the old. Again, the black- 
fioure style used filling-figures, unemployed and often meaningless, not 
only in large pictures, but also, one at a time, to decorate enclosed or even 
unconfined spaces. It was a decorative expedient of the painter who had 
nothing definite to say: it reminds one of the orientalising style, and 
recurs, in freer form, in the ‘ mantle-figures ’ of the classical red-figure 
style. But the black-figure painter lacked the feeling and the power 
of expression which might take a youth folding his cloak, or a girl putting 
away her shoes, and turn it into a humanly charming and artistically 
interesting pifture: this was reserved for the red-figure style. It is just 
in the simplest matters that the inherent difference between the two 
Styles is most immediately obvious. 

They were naturally in close contact at first. In the oldest group of 
red-figured vases both styles often appear on one vase, sometimes even 
in one picture. The most important workshop in this transitional period 
belonged to Andokides. He employed several painters, in red-figure 
two, one of whom has mote claim than any one else, as far as we can 

Figs, 27-28 tell, to be regarded as the inventor of the new technique. It was he who 
gave the workshop its character. His works can be tecognised at a 
glance, for he stands outside the stylistic formulae which wete soon 
established. His relation to the leading masters of the old technique has 
been fairly well expressed in the symbolic phrase that he was a pupil or 
pattner of Exekias. His style might almost be described as a translating 
of ‘mannerism’ into the new technique, but that would be ignoring a 
point of capital importance: Exekias stands at the end of a blind alley, 
into which the old technique, in the course of genetal development, 
naturally led, Andokides at the beginning of a new toad, for the new 
technique contained all the possibilities of development in drawing which 
were incompatible with the nature of the old technique. Even the most 

(Fig. 23) charming of Exekias’ pi€tures, the Family of the Dioscuri, demands a 
gteater effort from us before the shining black silhouettes speak to us as 
human beings, than similar red-figured pi€tures by Andokides. Ando- 
kides’ figures have a more dire&t appeal, with their ingenuous charm, their 
expressiveness, and the individual vivacity of features and motives, as in 
Athena holding out the tose to the resting Herakles, or in the smart 
young gentlemen listening to the song of the citharode. | 


32 


ARCHAIC RED-FIGURE : ANDOKIDES 


It is a delicious glimpse of life in Peisistratean Athens at its prime in 
the third quarter of the sixth century. The ‘ tyrant’ was a tyrant in the 
legal and political sense of the word alone, and it was only against his 
aristocratic opponents that he had to rely on force, for the great mass of 
the people felt itself blessed under the benevolent rule of a great man. 
His court drew poets and artists from afar, and Athens now began to 
become the metropolis of Ionian civilisation, and even the Hellas of 
Hellas. Some have taken our pi€tute as evidence of decadence, such 
decadence as we find in our great cities: but the comparison, like all 
such comparisons, is only half true at best. Even the Ionians, who 
tended under Asiatic influence to softness and luxuty, wete not far re- 
moved from the simple freshness of a young people, high as their poetry 
and philosophy had already raised them. It is not decadence that we 
see, but the preciosity of young folk who are still naive but already highly 
tefined—a refined archaic style in life as in art. The sons and grandsons 
of these youths fought the battles of Marathon, Salamis and Plataia, 
witnessed the tragedies of Aeschylus, the painting of Polygnotos, and 
the sculpture of Pheidias: and all these things were not a revulsion, nor 
a tevival, but the maturity of the first fruit on the tree of European human- 

ity. Our illustrations are the reflection of this most momentous passage 
: in the history of mankind. 

Andokides’ picture shows us the life of his time through the veil Fig. 27 
of an art which raises the subject to the second power. Young men with 
sprouting whiskers, with studied and various coiffures, in flowered gar- 
ments—one youth weating his over his head like a lady—toses in their 
hands, one smelling his, with smart smooth canes which present a sig- 
nificant contrast to the rough knobby sticks of the democratic period— 
it is really a surprising human document. The painter has stated all his 
facts very clearly, except one. The youth on the left should really be 
leaning on the stick propped under his armpit, a motive most popular 
later, usually with the body leaning right forward. But here the youth 
looks as if he were walking, and the arms are unnaturally flattened out. 
* Correct ’ the ‘ error,’ and the piture is ruined: the balance and rhythm 
of the composition, the flow of line, the decorative effec, all gone. The 
tealistic Standard is applicable only so far as the artist uses it himself : 
hete the leaning is only suggested: later artists represented it, because it 
interested them as a problem of statics. The smallness of the musician, 
and especially of his legs, is not due to the incompetence of an artist 
who could do no better: the archaic idealistic style, like the classical, has 
its own world, in which the only laws are those of the artistic organism, 


a ie Te ee oe ae 


f 
4 


E 33 


JHE J. PAUL Ge 
ings 


Eee FAR 


ARCHAIC RED-FIGURE : ANDOKIDES 


The stiff fingers, too, are not due entirely to the painter’s instrument. 
He could have made them as lively as the bent ones. It is the same with 
the anatomy : he gives, in his own language, what interests him, such as 
the sharp joints and even the seldom seen projection on the heel. The 
garments end in a hem with plenty of folds, while the other side of the 
garment ends in small arcs and serves the folds as a background: this 
system long remained in vogue. The drapery moétly follows the outline 
of the body, but already it sometimes banks up in soft masses. 

Fig. 28 The unsigned picture of Herakles shows progress. Athena’s under- 
garment is grouped about a central fold in half-perspective swallowtail 
folds, and the leg of Herakles is drawn under his mantle as if the stuff were 
transparent ; it is only Athena’s over-garment that still shows the stiff 
squated surface of Klitias and Exekias. ‘There is lyrical feeling in the 
picture. Herakles is resting from the fatigue of his labours and comforting 
himself with meat and drink. The couch is set under the shadow of a 
gteat vine, and in front of it stands his divine patroness and companion, 
smiling gaily at him and holding him out a rose. Even the eyes are full 
of expression, although they are drawn frontal in the profile heads, in 
consequence of the archaic habit, explained earlier, of working not from 
the thing seen but from the memory-image. With a slight shift of the 
itis, of the contour, of the brow, the painters can produce numerous 
effects of look and expression. ‘That is why they clung to the archaic 
formula long after they had become capable of drawing a correct side- 

(Fig. 51) view of the eye. It was not until the classical period that the side-view 
came to have form and expression. The details of the pi€ture are executed 
with loving archaic care, every fact clearly stated and every corner hand- 
somely decorated, from Athena’s elegant helmet and the aegis with its 
lovely curling snakes to the cates on the table—the loaves, the long slices 
of meat with the knife lying on them, a plate of fruit, no doubt dried 
figs, a tiny objeét, probably a stand, and a little cup; the big drinking- 
vessel is in Herakles’ hand; it is the old Homeric goblet, the cantharos 
of Dionysos. The graceful table is of the shape which gave its name 
to the geometrical trapezoid, three-legged with a narrowing top, so as 
not to be in the way at the foot of the couch. The couch is a Milesian 
kline, such as is mentioned in the inscription about the auétion of 
Alcibiades’ effects after his condemnation. We may think of it as veneered 
with ivory and ornamented with coloured inlay. The clusters of the vine 
are in raised black, so that there are bright high-lights on the grapes: the 
leaves are red. Owing to a slip in the blacking-in of the background the 
trunk and some of the branches are interrupted between table and couch. 


34 


ARCHAIC RED-FIGURE 


The same picture exadtly, with a few additions, is painted on the 
back of the vase in black-figure technique, and undoubtedly by another 
painter. ‘Thus every one’s taste was satisfied, as in the comical alternation 
of old and new geese on the Melian vase. Other black-figure pi€tures are (Fig. 3) 
so like the red-figure pictures by our master that they are probably by his 
own hand. In any case, the second painter in the workshop, who also 
worked for Menon, used both techniques. He is less petsonal and already 
walks in later paths. Close to this painter stands a charming cup-pi€ture 
with two hetairai at their wine. If it is a€tually his, it is his most vivacious Fig. 29 
work, ‘The flute-player beats time with her foot. The other hands her 
a cup ctying ‘ You drink too!’ ‘The picture is excellently adapted to 
the space, and the lines of the naked bodies are as sensitive as can be: 
the archaic scheme is filled almost to the brim with fresh young life. In 
the last quarter of the sixth century the drinking-cup became more and 
more important as a vehicle for pictures. Its prime is in the first quartet 
of the fifth: then the decoration of the long bands on the gently curving 
cup-exterior was the chief concern of a throng of masters, whose leaders 
were draughtsmen of real genius. The circular picture in the interior 
also played its part, but it no longer attracted the painters so much as 
in the sixth century, when it offered a special problem. To fill the round 
decoratively with a single figure, and at the same time to feed the newly 
awakened interest in the manifold motives of human attitude and move- 
ment: that was the double task which they set themselves, without 
submitting to it unconditionally, for it was the most gifted of them who 
at times declined to fill their space faultlessly and sent their figures walking 
freely through the round. 

Our examples of early tondos belong to about 520 B.c. The first Figs. 30, 
two ate not from cups, but from plates, in which the space-filling is usually 31> 33, 34 
freer. ‘They ate the work of one of the chief masters of the time, Epi- 
ktetos, who combined a brilliant technique, clean and uniform, with sure 
and delicate draughtsmanship. His figures are mostly slim and fine- 
limbed, often light and winsome, though not very freshly conceived, 
and by no means strong in expression. The last word in this kind of 
att is his reveller, a portly elderly man singing as he goes; the space is Fig, 30 
rather loosely filled, and the only supplement to the figure is the signature. 

Mote typical is the warrior with the horse, in the flat treatment and the Fig. 31 
pute contour-effe@t a true Epiktetos: the drawing is unsurpassably 
delicate and sure, but has a certain academic lifelessness. 

Much fresher and more spirited was his contemporary Skythes—the Figs, 32-34 
Scythian, as he calls himself at first, a foreign slave, therefore, whose 


35 


: 
: 
1 


ARCHAIC RED-FIGURE: SKYTHES 


barbarous name no one in Athens, perhaps, could pronounce. Foreign 
names from all quarters of the compass appear among the Attic potters 

and painters; some of the most important bear slave-names, several 

names show non-Greek blood. Yet their art is perfectly Greek and 

perfe@tly Attic: culture means so much, and blood so little. Skythes 

is not inferior to Epiktetos in technical capacity, but nothing is farther 

from him than the slightly academic correétness of that master. Even 

in his restful figures his line has more organic life, but it is only when it 

comes to movement that he is in his element. Even the old type of the 

runner looking back, a well-rounded space-filler in Epiktetos, makes the 

Fig. 34 spatks fly in Skythes as he whizzes past. How ferociously Theseus 

Fig. 32 gtips the monster’s throat, and how the monster’s head falls back! Skythes 

isa mastet of gentle movement also, and his singing reveller is artistically 

Fig. 33 one of the freest tondos of the period. It is the picture in the interior of 
Fig. 32 the Theseus cup. We observe the advance in the details of the drawing : 

the muscles of breast and belly, hardly noticed by Andokides, have re- 

ceived definite form, the trochanter hollow is clearly marked on the 

thigh, and the muscles of the ribs are at least suggested. ‘The drapery 

shows the typical formulae of the archaic style: below the girdle, in 

mounting and descending groups of folds, but smooth; above the 

girdle foldless, but covered with fine wavy lines to indicate the crépe-like 

quality of the material. Typical archaic exclusiveness and love of con- 

trast; the artist takes from actual appearance no mote than the main 

elements of the artistic formula. To strengthen the upper part—the 

wavy lines being done in diluted colour—it has a pattern of dots: why 

the pattern is absent below we ate not meant to ask. That the two parts 

form one homogeneous garment there is not the least doubt, and no one 

(Figs. 38, Who is acquainted with the art of the period finds that strange. The 
41, 42) bagginess at the belly is due to the stuff being pulled up over the girdle. 

The landscape touches ate also very characteristic: a marvellously unreal 

spike of rock indicates the solitude in which the monster lives, and wild 

flora and fauna are indicated on it by a shrub and a hare, both in the 
black-figure technique, which Skythes used at times for whole pictures. — 

Before we follow the red-figure style farther, let us look at an example 

of the new white-ground technique, described in the Introdu@tion. Our 

Fig. 35 illustration shows the pi€ure rolled out by an ingenious photographic 
method invented by Arthur Hamilton Smith of the British Museum : 

otherwise it would be impossible to see the whole pi€ture at once, as it 

encircles a slender perfume-vase. The vase comes from the workshop 

of Pasiades. ‘The subjeé seems to be a Dionysiac cleansing and dedication 


36 


c Be 
~~ 

are 

al 

+ ay 


ARCHAIC RED-FIGURE 


of a house : the house is indicated by the tame heron. One woman holds 
what is probably a cup of lustral water, while the other runs round the 
house sprinkling it with wetted branches: her panthet-skin points to the 
cult of Dionysos. The coloured areas are painted, some with black 
vatnish, others with the same diluted to a a yellow. The style 
is Still very old-fashioned. 

In the two pictures from the busy factory of Pamphaios, which flour- Figs. 36-37 
ished in the last third of the sixth century, the drawing is more developed. 
The black-figure style was practised in this faGtory, but its importance 
rests on red-figured vases decorated by various painters, including Epi- 
ktetos. ‘The latest of the extant vases may have been painted about 510. 
Rather earlier than this is the amphora which at last gives us a general Fig. 36 
view of a ted-figured vase. ‘The shape is usually called a stamnos, but 
no doubt wrongly ; in representations of it it serves as a mixing-vessel. 
Here we see a sturdy old-fashioned version of the shape: in the classical (Fig. 102) 
Style there ate two varieties, both perfe€tly balanced, with upward-straining 
contour. ‘There are palmettes at the handles, and between the palmettes, 
with no other framing, spaces for pictures, each of which is filled with a 
gtoup. Our pidure shows a peculiar conception of the fight between 
Herakles and the tiver-god Acheloos. Acheloos, like a true water- 
creature, tries to defend himself by transformations. He usually appears 
as a bull-man modelled on the centaur or horse-man, but here as a 
snake-man. He still has his horn, in which his magic strength resides. 
Herakles is breaking it off. The picture is most probably by the painter 
Oltos, not one of the great painters, but an important representative of 
the transition to the early prime of the red-figured style: our picture 
may belong to the teens of the sixth century. It does not teach us 
mote about the painter, but shows the strength and maturity which 
draughtsmanship had now attained. ‘The forms have all become simpler, 
and are firmly and surely stylised, even to small anatomical details, with 
considerable understanding of the organism. 

A farther Step in this direftion is shown by an important cup-pictute. Fig, 37 
We do not know the master’s name ; he already stands on the threshold 
of the early prime and his work bears affinity to the beginnings of the 
brilliant painter Euphronios. The subject is the recovery of the body of 
| Memnon, whom Achilles had slain, by the spirits of Sleep and Death, 
' under the guidance of his mother Eos, and Iris, messenget of the Gods. 
The excessive discrepancy in the scale of the figures does not disturb 
an att which is concerned with space-filling and with emphasis of essen- 
tials. The painter was interested in the monumental figure of the dead 


37 


ARCHAIC RED-FIGURE: EUTHYMIDES 


man and in the solicitude of the rescuers. He has succeeded brilliantly 
in both. The figure of Memnon is not large in measurements only, he 
is of a large mould; the execution shows remarkable anatomical know- 
ledge, and the dead arms are exceedingly expressive. More limpness 
in the corpse would have been thought inartistic at this period. The 
women, with the ornamental, pseudo-perspettive Sstylisation of their 
garments—the first example of the fully developed stylisation we have 
come actoss—make a sort of rich frame to the main group. The chitons 
of the demons ate covered with a golden-brown wash of diluted varnish, 
an approximation to monumental painting which was tried at this time 
but very properly abandoned later. ‘The piéture as a whole shows us 
the red-figure style ready to attempt the highest and to achieve it. 

The first bloom of the style, now fully conscious of its powers and 
in full command of its methods, comes at the end of the sixth century. 
It is the time when the beauty of young Leagros is in all mouths, and we 
Still possess some fifty vases which celebrate him in word and in piéture. 

Figs. 38-47 The leading painters of the period are Euthymides and the young 
Euphronios. The workshop of Euphronios was still flourishing in 470 : 

Figs. 38-39 Euthymides we know only in the Leagros period. An amphora which is 
one of the most important works of the early prime of the severe period 
beats the words ‘ painted by Euthymides, son of Pollias; as never Euph- 
ronios.’ On another vase of his the self-praise, not unknown in the 
black-figure period, is reinforced: ‘truly well painted, yes, indeed.’ 
His pride is justified, and the question which is the better, his work or 
the contemporary work of Euphronios, is still disputed. We possess 
too little of each to pass a final judgment, and the problem of their sub- 
sequent development leads us into uncertain country. But we can under- 
stand Euthymides’ ejaculation. His principal extant works are indeed 
superior in several respects to those of the young Euphronios, in the execu- 
tion of the details especially, but also in a certain amplitude and maturity. 
Euphronios on the other hand discloses a talent and a temperament 
which lead us, considering his youth, to hope for higher things. Whether 
Euthymides was older or more precocious, he had reason to feel uneasy 
on the score of his rival. 

Fig. 38 ‘The Hector amphora, on which he claims to have surpassed Euphronios, 
is the best of his signed works. The names Heétor, Priam, Hecuba are 
indeed but traditional appendages to an everyday scene, a youth arming 
with the help of his parents. The youthful mother holds the spear and 
the helmet. In front of her is the shield, leaning against nothing, as if 
the painter had forgotten the triangular trestle, which is rarely represented, 


38 


ARCHAIC RED-FIGURE: EUTHYMIDES 


ot had omitted it for the sake of balance of composition. The old father 
Stands well wrapped up, giving good advice with raised forefinger. 
The young man is carefully adjusting his armour. The simple incident 
is treated with great love and cate. The artist has no longer the simplicity 
of an Andokides, but his attitude towards his task is not yet so detached 
and superior as that of a classical master. He is an archaic master, the 
insignificant still fixes his attention, and the execution of details is no less 
impottant to him than the design of the pi@ure as a whole. What a 
contrast to the warrior’s leave-taking on a vase of the Periclean period ! (Fig. 102) 
There, an easy flowing treatment on large lines, and everything subordin- 
ated to the expression of a grand and simple mood: classical ethos in 
the language of the Parthenon frieze, uttered easily and unassumingly, 
to decorate a vase. Here, loving observation of everyday life and of 
individual forms, the struggle with artistic problems and means of tepte- 
sentation, all very serious, but ending in the joy of success—the pride 
of the artist in contrast to the modesty of the craftsman, which the painter 
of the Periclean picture could not but feel in face of the monumental 
work of his time. 

The other picture on the vase shows us the naked figures of three Fi. 39 
nocturnal revellers in lively motion, a compact composition which fills 
the space admirably, no doubt less important to the painter than the 
aftming scene in point of theme and expression, but at least equally im- 
portant as a study of form: the naked figures in motion are among the 
masterpieces of their time. Anatomy and drapery, rest and motion, 
expression and perspective, ate all mastered, from the archaic point of 
view, in this amphora ; and the proud inscription is justified. Although 
the spatial representation is still in many particulars primitive, and although 
there is still a good deal of ideographic piecing together of the whole 
figure out of separate views of the parts, yet compared with earlier work 
the figures of Euthymides already have a corpoteity which is by no means 
entirely due to theit massive full-blooded forms and their heavy masses 
of drapery. In another amphora the value lies more in the single figures ; Fig. 40 
once more, three of them make the picture, but the space is adequately 
filled and no mote. ‘The chief figure is called Phayllos. He stands with 
a hint of contraposto in his attitude, swinging the discus above his head. 
The trunk is foreshortened with considerable success, the head is of 
Statuesque beauty. The person meant is probably the famous pentathlos 
from Croton, who later captained a ship at Salamis. The rendering of 
his forms shows an effort after fluidity and simple beauty. The anatomy 
is not so detailed. The painter tried various forms in the profiles of the 


39 


ARCHAIC RED-FIGURE : EUTHYMIDES 


faces: Phayllos is noblest with his finely arched nose and his strong chin 
(foreshortened away in our illustration). 

Figs. 41-42 Besides these signed works we have an unsigned amphora which can 
be attributed to Euthymides with complete certainty. It is in many 
respects his masterpiece. The subject is Theseus carrying off a maiden. 
The group of the young hero grasping Korone and hoisting her up need 
not shun comparison with the marble group from the pediment of the 
Temple of Apollo at Eretria. In both works a perfec blend of severe . 
Style with nature heightens the effect of both ingredients and produces 7 
a general impression of extraordinary charm. ‘The tense, strouting figure 
of Theseus, fronting us as he turns, with one foot seen ftom above, is 
all of a piece. The angular extension of the arms on the pi@ure-surface 
becomes a pute means of expression. The only archaic effe& is that of 
the eye, frontal in a head which turns sharply sidewards because Helen 
clings to Korone. But how expressive the eye is, with the iris not quite 
touching the upper lid: even the eyelids, naively rendered by rows of : 
Strokes, seem to be bristling with excitement. What saucy determination S 
in the corner of the tight-pressed lips ; and saucy also the blunted nose. a 
On the other hand, the expressional value of the high eyebrows is here as = 
elsewhere fortuitous : the height is due to the archaic custom of placing 
the eye too low (exaggerated in Helen), the artists not knowing how to 

Fig. 42 draw it in as part of the head. Peirithoos, who is covering the rear, 
turns round, for in the other panel two mote girls are rushing up, while 
a man holds cautiously back. The feminine proportions of the girls 
show good observation. The compromise between the violent motion 
and the archaic drapery has the charm of a piquant contrast. 

In this picture Euthymides addresses a word of personal greeting to 
Theseus. This is the period in which Theseus grew into the national 
heto of Attica, in which the cycle of his seven labours was coined in image 
and song. The Thesean metopes of the Athenian Treasury at Delphi 
belong to this time. In the person of the young hero the people of 
Athens saw its own fortunate and promising youth. That was the 
feeling which prompted Euthymides’ greeting. 

To the circle of Euthymides, though hardly to his hand, belongs one 

Fig. 43 of the most impressive of all vase-paintings. The revenge of Orestes 
is divided between two panels. Orestes seizes Aigisthos, stabs him, and 
strikes him, struggling desperately, with glazing eye, from the throne. 
Clytemnestra rushes up with the axe. Oreétes, watned no doubt by 
Chrysothemis, who stands petrified in helpless horror, looks round at 
his mother : too late, unless Talthybios can wrest the axe from her hands. 


40 


OF ee a ee Ne aa eg See a eS aa Be ee ee: eee Oe 


= 

ae 

5 

‘ . 

= 

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Fe 


ARCHAIC RED-FIGURE : EUPHRONIOS 


This is the oldest and most important of a whole seties of pitures, all 
free vetsions of a single model, probably a monumental painting, which 
seems to have influenced Aeschylus as well. With the simple devices 
of atchaic art the artist has contrived to give an uncannily strong expression 
of wild passion, and the effect is heightened by the unintentional hardness 
and angularity of many of the movements. The austerity of this stage 
of style was admirably adapted to express the rude grandeur of this bloody 
tragedy in its pre-classical epic form. Aeschylus bestows no more than 
a passing wotd upon the motive of the axe, and bloody businéss was 
hot represented on the stage: the classical style seeks and finds the tragic 
in the life of the soul alone. Archaic painting shows us the son’s eyes 
meeting the mother’s at the climax of the revenge. The whole effect is 
given by simple movements, by simple composition of cross-lines and 
counter-cross-lines, parallels and intersections, and by tiny variations 
in the profile of the face and in mouth and eye. ‘Two waves of passion 
reat up to meet each other: between them is the trembling Chrysothemis, 
who here takes the place of strong Electra ; for it was not until the fifth 
century that Electra, indelibly impressed upon our minds by Attic 
drama, became the daughter of Agamemnon. 

It is from a later work of the same circle that two details come, which Figs. 44-45 
give us a closer view of the grandeur and beauty of the style. Even in 
these extracts we can feel the contrast of the two maenads: one moving 
quietly, with shimmering fair hair and a beauty of feature which is almost 
classic, the other raging past in magnificent Dionysiac ecstasy. 

We tetutn to Euphronios, whom we have already encountered as Figs. 46-49 
the aspiring rival of Euthymides. It is not possible to do justice to him 
in a small book based on pictures, and the principles upon which our 
selection is made do not even allow us to figure one of the signed works 
of his youth. The chief work of his early period, in many respects 
the masterpiece of the early prime of the style, does not admit of any 
considerable reduction: it occupies a triple plate in my large book. 
This vast pi@tute of the wrestling-match between Herakles and Antaios, 
painted on a big mixing-bowl, is both in line and in expression a mag- 
nificent performance. The promise of the Memnon cup from the work- (Fig. 37) 
shop of Pamphaios is here overwhelmingly fulfilled. Euphronios has 
concentrated all his efforts upon the great main group. The subsidiary 
figutes are hastily dashed in. Euthymides would not have allowed himself 
to do that: but on the other hand he could hardly have compassed the 
gtand fling of the wrestling-group. We may take it that he realised this 
in spite of himself, and that it was fot merely the outward success of 


F AI 


ARCHAIC RED-FIGURE : EUPHRONIOS 


Euphronios which he resented. His self-respect could not brook the 
thought that the young lion who had shown his paw was stronger than he. 
One can imagine him standing in front of the Antaios krater and censuring 
what it was easy to censure: and hence the proud words on his Hector 
amphora. 

Figs. 46-47 ‘The pi€tures which we figure from this period are unsigned, but they 
may be assigned to Euphronios with the utmost confidence. We may 
even conjecture that the great krater with the pi€ture of Herakles fighting 
the Amazons was signed on the now missing foot. ‘This picture is a 
monumental work like the Antaios, and the small subsidiary frieze shows 
us by its contrast the wide range of the master’s art. Side by side with 
the main picture—grandly formed and felt, and most surely and severely 
drawn—easy naturalistic sketches of rushing revellers. There are even 
young boys with fat bellies, and a bald head has the peaked skull of the 
Homeric Thersites. ‘The principal pi€ure is closely related to one of 
the earliest works of Euphronios, the Geryon cup which he painted in 
the factory of Kachrylion. The schema of the fight with the three-bodied 
monster is here transferred, with slight alterations, to the Amazonomachy : 
it goes back to a much older composition already used by Exekias in an 
eatly work belonging to the middle of the sixth century: a good example 
of typological tradition, that great economy which is one of the pre- 
requisites of the incomparable sureness of style which is a characteristic 
of Greek art. Such limitations left plenty of scope for personality, and 
Euphronios is highly personal in this work. It is superior to the Antaios 
in its uniform perfection, perfection of composition as well as of other 
things. It is the maturest among the great works of his early period, and 
is probably not much earlier than the turn of the century. Compared 
with the signed vases, the drawing is not so much freer in details as more 
spitited in general effect. A fundamental innovation is the feeling for 
space which reveals itself not only in particular foreshortenings, as in 
the foot of one of the Amazons, but in entire figures like the splendid 
Telamon. Speaking generally, the composition is naturally still confined 
to the front plane, which is not only filled perfe€tly, but as it were clamped 
together: two symmetrical groups are firmly interlocked, Herakles and 
his opponents with the axis of the superimposed shields, and Herakles 
and Telamon with the fallen Amazons. But the construétion does not 
thrust itself upon the eye : we do not see the artistic device at first, we only 
feel its beneficent effeét, and the form is always filled with expression, 
the expression of the victory of two heroes over menacing odds. The 
picture has a touch of the monumental artist, and also approximates to 


42 


7 

) 
‘2 
=. 
Py, 
ae 

| 


ARCHAIC RED-FIGURE : EUPHRONIOS 


monumental painting in the free use of toned surfaces, an experiment 
which appeared in the Memnon cup but which later, in the interests of 
pure drawing, was restri€ted to occasional use for one or two details. 

Perhaps a little later still is a smaller krater of a different shape, decor- Fig. 46 
ated with unpretentious snapshots from the life of Attic youths. They 
ate all named, but the prize of beauty is awarded to the young Leagros 
alone. He is represented on the other side of the vase, naturally in 
the same typical fashion as his companions. The young people assembled 
in the palaestra are nobler in physique than the nightbirds on the Amazon 
krater, but they show unmistakably the personal style of Euphronios, 
and the same ingenuous sense of reality. One youth swings the discus, 
but all the others are in charming motives from ordinary life. These 
vases and others like them lead the way to the fragments of an important 
cup which preserves part of the signature of Euphronios: here already 
we ask ourselves whether we are to supply ‘ painted’ or ‘made.’ For 
about the turn of the century Euphronios came into possession of a 
factory of his own, which flourished for at least a generation. After 
this we do not know for certain that he ever signed as painter, and it is 
theoretically possible that not one of the vases which bear his signature 
as maker was painted by him. In one of these his signature is followed 
by the fragmentary signature of another painter: and the style would 
have told us at once that the pifture was not by Euphronios. All the 
other cases are disputed, and towards the end even the standard of ptob- 
ability fails us. But it is not impossible that he played a personal part in 
the stylistic development which took place in his time: if any one could, 
Euphronios could. That he never painted again is, considering his 
talent, inconceivable, and that not one of all the vases preserved is his, 
unlikely. The question cannot be discussed further here, where we 
cannot follow the minuter stylistic changes in the history of the art as 
a whole, much less in individual personalities. We therefore confine 
outselves to presenting two more masterpieces, neither very far removed Figs. 48-49 
from the eatly period of Euphronios. Each illustrates a further step in 
the general development. There are good grounds for assuming them 
to be by Euphronios himself, but no documentary certainty. 

The great Theseus cup, in which the tondo occupies an unusually Fig. 48 
large part of the interior, is one of the most important works of its period. 
The outside is decorated with four fights, in which the naked forms 
and the large movements are splendidly strong and free. The effect of 
the interior picture is austerer, owing to the solemnity of the scene 
and the quiet attitudes of the draped figures. The subject is the story of 


43 


ARCHAIC RED-FIGURE CUPS 


the young Theseus, on his voyage to Crete, how he was insulted by 
Minos, how he sprang overboatd and found himself in the palace of the 
lords of the sea. Here is the boy, with his *proteétress Athena, in the 
ptesence of Amphitrite: dolphins play round him, and a little Triton 
supports his feet. Amphitrite offers her hand to him and holds the 
ptecious wteath which will prove him son of Poseidon and light him in 
the darkness of the labyrinth. The picture is a triumph of the relief-line, 
with the grand yet animated severity of its drapery, and the purity and 
simplicity of all the lines; it is a marvel of a technical care which never 
sinks into pettiness. And what exquisite feeling for nature in the con- 
ception, what noble, refined sensuousness in the treatment of form. 
This timid yet trusting boy is the naive archaic counterpart to the classical 
Idolino, whose ‘ pute youthful modesty with its genuine blush’ was 
felt so deeply by Julius Lange. ‘Two hands are drawn in stiff relief-lines 
against an unquiet background, but all the other limbs are rendered finely 
and sensitively in their elegant slimness. ‘The living wave of the arms 
and hands guides the eye through the many verticals of the pictute, and is 
emphasised by the contrast with the stiff line of the spear which cuts across 
it. And the feeling of the picture: the same naive sensuous relation to 
the gods which is still found among simple folk in the south: trusting 
and solemn at the same time. ‘This is not the sublimity of Aeschylean 
religion, but it is true popular religion in the vesture of Greek form. 

The supet-refinement and subtle exaggeration which invade the 
archaic language of form, especially in drapery, about the turn of the 
century—the last word of that language before it turned towards freedom 
and thereby towards dissolution—was not the proper means of expression 
for the temperament which Euphronios reveals even in his early works : 
for already in these the scholastic severity and regularity of his first works, 
such as the Geryon cup, is seen beginning to relax. And so he did not 
remain long at the grandiose stylisation of the Theseus, but soon fought 
his way through to the freedom which caught and lifted the whole of 
Greek art at the beginning of the fifth century. Then came the prime 
of cup-painting : instead of making it their ambition to create works 
which should have the external semblance of a monumental art, the 
vase-painters turned more and mote to discovering and developing the 
specific qualities of a draughtsmanship of incredible perfection and almost 
limitless power of expression, a draughtsmanship which was the corus- 
cating counterpart of a joyous national life. There is no more brilliant 
tepresentative of the first half of this development than the celebrated 
“ Panaitios painter,’ that is, the artist of numerous cups in a highly personal 


44 


ARCHAIC RED-FIGURE CUPS 


Style, several of which bear the name of Euphronios as maker. Two of 
these, and a number of others, extol the fair Panaitios, a successor of 
Leagtos in the favour of the potters. This painter, with his inexhaustible 
vitality and his unsurpassable power of moulding great handfuls of pulsat- 
ing human life into artistic form, is probably no other than Euphronios 
himself, Euphronios freed from the trammels of older stylistic traditions 
and become the most brilliant interpreter of the fair life and youthful 
exuberance of the first free democratic people in the world. 
What had previously been a secondary interest soon became his chief 

theme, and he contrived to ennoble low subjects as the Dutch painters 
their topers and tavern-brawls. His picture of a drunken scuffle—un- 
happily too gross for this little book—is the classic treatment of the subject 
—in the metaphorical sense of the word; for the teal classical style, the 
post-Persian style, tolerated such scenes only in comedy and in caricature. 
The picture we reproduce stands at the beginning of this development. 
On a low seat sits an old man who immediately reminds us of the old Fig. 49 
reveller on the Amazon krater. A basket hangs above him on a nail, (Fig. 47) 
one of those baskets in which you brought your food to the drinking- 
patty. In front of him stands the lyre-player holding the loop of her 
girdle, from the position of her fingers tying it rather than untying: the 
old gentleman protests strongly. The comparison with Lysistrata and 
her impatient husband is not quite exact: but the spirit is the same. 
* Alcaeus and Sappho,’ says the old catalogue of the British Museum : 
so little feeling had the classicising period for the real life of the Greek 
world. ‘The filling of the round is no longer two-dimensional : super- 

j positions, foreshortenings, and accessories produce an effect of depth. 

i The archaic style still retains a touch of its old austerity: a little while, 
and the incomparable beauty of its latest period breaks through. 

Before we turn to that period, let us glance at two unique masterpieces Figs. 50-51 

of the turn of the century: the later of the two, if not both, may belong 
to the beginning of the fifth century. The exaggeration of the archaic 
Style which we mentioned when speaking of the Theseus cup is really (Fig. 48) 
mannetism, the mannetism which always appeats when a powerful style 
is exhausting its last possibilities and is relu€tant to turn off into new paths 
which are foreign to its nature. This happened with the black-figure 
Style in the middle of the sixth century, with the classical red-figure style 
in the later fifth century, and here at the turn to the late archaic period. 
It is the last struggle of the ornamental formulae and the elegance and 
pteciosity of archaic art against the relentless advance of the double 
tendency towards a plain, natural transcript of appearances and towards 


45 


ARCHAIC RED-FIGURE CUPS 


Fig. 50 simplification of the means of expression. In vase-painting the cup by 
Peithinos is the most charaéteristic example of this kind of art. We 
reproduce the picture in the interior, Peleus wrestling with Thetis. The 
sea-maiden tries to escape from her unwelcome wooer by all sorts of 
terrifying transformations, which are indicated in the naive archaic manner ; 
but Peleus holds her as fast as Herakles held Triton. Peithinos is of his 
time, but the strength of his drawing lies entirely in its ornamental 
quality. The chief vehicle of his style is the drapery. Although the 
gtoups of folds, the swallowtails, and the lozenge-shaped hems ate based 
on an idea of perspective, and although the natural rounding and move- 
ment of the hems is by no means ignored, the effe@ is nevertheless flat 
and ornamental in consequence of the deliberate regularity and symmetry, 
of the sharp contrast to the smooth star-sown areas, and to the insub- 
stantial quasi-transparency of the chitons and even the mantles. In the 
hair this linear style almost hurts the eyes: the thinnest of thin lines 
are ranged side by side with only a hairsbreadth between. It is significant 
of the painter’s lack of organic feeling that the snakes of Thetis are almost 
incorporeal dotted bands, and that the knitted fingers of Peleus form a 
maeander. The lion, on the other hand, is a masterpiece in little: here 
the inorganic lies not so much in the ornamental treatment of the forms 
as in the artlessness with which the painter has borrowed a type ready- 
made from sculpture and made it serve by turning it at right-angles 
downwards. The lion has something of the energy which is lacking 
in the human figures, even in Strong Peleus. Peleus’ over-delicate feet — 
are as brittle as Thetis’ fingers. But the outline of his thigh is incom- 
parably beautiful. 

(Fig. 48) The Theseus cup showed what a magnificent effe@ this Style could 
produce in the hands of a real master. The painter of a cup from the work- 

Fig. 5x Shop of Sosias was a greater and truer artist than Peithinos, and on the — 
whole his superior in technical mastery, for where he chooses to be 
elaborate, his hand is so light that there is not the least stiffness even 
where the stylisation is strongest. To him the ornamental Style is not 
an end in itself. He handles it with more freedom and less tightness - 
than Peithinos, more as an ornamental accessory, so that even in the piture 
outside the cup, a brilliant assemblage of the gods, he does not aim at 
the grandeur of Euphronian stylisation. The picture in the interior is 
unique: Achilles binding up Patroclus’ arm after removing the atrow. 
The wounded man sits on his shield, in much the same position as the 

(Fig. 49) old gentleman with the lyre-girl, but he presses his foot still more naively 
against the border. He holds his arm out ; the flap of his corslet is lifted 


46 


1a 
, 


ARCHAIC RED-FIGURE CUPS 


from the shoulder; he turns his head away, and the pain makes him 
draw his breath in through his clenched teeth; in these circumstances 
he does not sit so decently as Greeks normally sit. Every detail is executed 
most lovingly, from the fur cap which protedts Patroclus’ head against 
the pressute of the helmet to the feathering of the arrow. The earlier 
masterpieces of Euphronios are no doubt grander than this, and the later 
ones freer, but the marvellous finish of the Achilles and Patroclus bears 
any comparison, or rather declines comparison, not because it is beyond 
compatison, but because it stands alone. It is a pi€ture pure and simple : 
yet no one could maintain that it was not a true vase-piCture, that is, not 
decorative enough: in a cup of no great size, the tondo, with its almost 
flat surface, makes no special constructional demands, and does not requite 
to tell at a distance: and the vase-technique is handled with such easy 
mastery that it makes no demands but is completely subservient to the 
attist’s aim. So even the tiniest wrinkles do not produce an effect of 
pettiness, for they are put in so lightly and so unobtrusively that they 
Stand in the proper relation to the whole and even heighten its intrinsic 
grandeur. It has been well said that no monumental painting of the time 
can have been more complete, and that the differentiation of the several 
parts of the armour by means of patterns of varying density is a kind of 
substitute for the colour effects of monumental painting. The side-view 
of the eye, unparalleled in the vase-painting of the time, and the whiteness 
of teeth and bandage, must be derived from the same soutce. The picture 
still contains many naive and unnatural details like the foot of Patroclus 
pressing on the border: his neck, for instance, sits on his left shoulder. 
But no one bothers about that, any more than the general effect is destroyed 
by the finish of the parts. What eye familiar with the language of the 
atchaic style sees anything here but the expression of eager, cautious 
solicitude in Achilles, ill-concealed pain in Patroclus, and a union of truth 
and beauty which is a harbinger of early classical art P 
A new world is presented to us by the pictures of Brygos, that is, Figs. 52-57 

the brilliant painter who worked in the factory of Brygos at the time 
of the Persian wats and as late as the seventies. External evidence points 
to his having been the owner of the factory himself. At least two other 
painters, both much less important, worked in the factory at the same time. 
The earliest cup with the signature belongs to the circle of Peithinos and 
Sosias, and as far as the technique goes, might be by the chief master ; if so, 
it would be a derivative school-bound early work: for the brilliant works 
of the maturity are as unlike it as can be. The position occupied by the 
vases of Euphronios-Panaitios in the early period of the development 


47 


ARCHAIC RED-FIGURE: BRYGOS 


towards freedom is taken by those of Brygos in the prime of the 
late archaic period. The last stage of the archaic style is marked by a 
beauty of form and energy of expression which ate often tavishing. 
The painters handled the legacy of the atchaic style with sovereign ease, 
contrived to loosen its bands or even to remove them, and without 
sacrificing the piquancy of the severe forms, they moved within the limits 
of the old Style in self-confident freedom. The flat plane-surface acquited 
depth, the outlines plastic power, while the black background lost its 
opaqueness and can be thought of as ait. No one achieved so much as 
Brygos. He performed the miracle of Pygmalion, filling the severe 
attistic form with the warm blood of mobile life. 

In this sense his work may be described as pi@torial—even apatt from 
his copious and distinétly pictorial use of vatnish diluted to a golden 
yellow, which combines with a good deal of ted, some white, a little gold, 
and sttong accents of black, to produce a colour effeét which is, on the 

Figs. 53, 57 whole, decorative rather than really piorial. If we compate his ecstatic 
Fig. 49 revellers and satyrs with similar pi@tures by Euphronios-Panaitios, Euph- 
ronios-Panaitios seems more of a pute draughtsman and even his liveliest 
creatures have a more abstract effect: we feel the quality of the line as such, 

the particular value of the individual figure, and that touch of grandeur 
which made us describe his picture of a drunken scuffle as the classic 
treatment of the subjeét. No one will call the pi€tures of Brygos classical : 

but there is hardly anything archaic left in them either. ‘They ate all life, 
movement, expression, and nothing more; conceived as piétotially as 

theit stage of artistic development and a technique which is of its nature 
linear would allow; and so planned as wholes that the most splendid 
single figure tells only as a part of the whole. The gentle heave of the 

Fig. 54 gitl’s garment in this tondo has nothing to do with Stages of artistic 
development, or techniques, or classifications into pictorial and linear : 

it transcends all these : it is a thing seen, a thing felt, and that is all. In 

the treatment of the human form and in the composition we see the happy 
effortlessness with which Brygos manipulated those artistic methods 
which we saw Euphronios gradually masteting. Naturally the main 
forms ate tendered with the utmost lightness and suteness of touch, 
naturally also the statement of anatomical details is as summaty as it is 

in the latest works of Euphronios. Moreover, the linear forms are often 
veiled by pictorial indication of hair on the body, producing on a smaller 

scale the same kind of effe& as his blond heads of hair. From time to 

time, no doubt, when its funéion required it, he would draw a hand 
carefully with all its details; but as a rule he contented himself with 


48 


re 

: 

= 7 
ae 
> 


ARCHAIC RED-FIGURE : BRYGOS 


a simple suggestion of the hand and especially of the fingers. But how 
expressive these swiftly drawn fingers are, whether they play the flute 
or stretch straight out as in early archaic art! There is no trace of stiff- 
ness left in them: the old schema has become impressionist form. 
Impressionist form, that is another of the pi€torial elements in Brygos. 
But he is a draughtsman of the early fifth century, and therefore, broadly 
speaking, the pure line of organic form is still his vehicle of expression. 
In this his achievement is even greater than in the gentle swing of his 
chiton-folds. He has a unique faculty of setting before our eyes, by an 
outline of classical simplicity, the noble rounding of a beautiful female 
atm. His rendering of slender youth and mature fulness, whether in 
man of woman, is equally convincing. He seldom draws ugly people, 
since he can be expressive without that. The secret of his art lies in the 
simplicity of the means by which he achieves the most various effeéts. 
Form, movement, expression of the mind, his hand achieved them all 
with the greatest possible economy: he was absolute master of line to 
its subtlest stirrings, and therefore he does not let it dominate his figures. 
The same in his composition. Neither symmetrical group and simple 
alignment, nor an arrangement and system of grouping which are spatially 
freer and frequently enlivened and pictorialised by accessories, are allowed 
to predominate over the representation. Like the individual forms, they 
metely subserve expression. Even the severer forms do not obtrude 
themselves upon the eyesight as such, or at least not in the originals, 
where their decorative value tells more strongly than in the reproductions. 
But in our endeavour to do the painter justice we run the risk of doing 
the opposite: we dismember the work into the parts which served him 
only to make up a whole. It is only by looking at his work that we get 
to know the whole artist and the whole man. This painter, who probably 
bote an un-Attic name, was purely Attic in spirit: keen-eyed, of refined 
sensuality, sensitive and fiery, changing in a moment from a subdued mood 
to unbridled passion, from trivial or realistic occurrences of everyday life 
to lofty tragedy, from the petulant pranks of satyrs to the devastating force 
of Dionysiac ecstasy. There is something majestic in the intellectual Fig. 57 
range which depiés with equal perfection the good-natured hetaira hold- Fi. 54 
ing the boy’s head, rather sisterly, as he vomits, and the Trojan mother 
swinging the pestle with the strength of despair, to cover the flight of her Fig. 52 
fait-haired boy from the murderous Greeks. Such contrasts of grave 
and gay occur even within the compass of a single pi€ture, but the expres- 
sions ate so finely graded that there is no effect of deliberate antithesis. 
The workshop of Hieron flourished at the same time as that of Brygos. 


G 49 


ARCHAIC RED-FIGURE : MAKRON 


Whether Hieron himself painted we do not know. In any case the 
leading painter in his concern was Makron, who has left us several dozens 
of vases, mostly cups. Makron is not an artist like Euphronios ot Brygos, 
and both as illustrator and as draughtsman he is on the whole inferior 
to Douris, whose work we shall presently consider. Makron’s strength, 
like Douris’, lies in his decorativeness ; peculiar to him is the touch of 
grandeur which accompanies it. What suits the mind and the decorative 
intention of Makron is not dramatic action soaring to a climax, but the 
broad stream of a state of rest or movement ; and not arrangement in 
space, but extension along the plane surface. But even his most rigid 
Stat-pattetns of boys and youths contain many charming motives, and ate 
not composed, any more than in Doutis, of stereotyped repetitions. In » 
Fig. 58 the billowy riot of his best maenad choirs the row of figures swells into a 
gtand general movement, which, owing to the perfe& interweaving of one 
boldly-moving shape with another and to the strong swing of the garments 
and loosened hair, has a strangely musical quality and power. Expression 
and decorative form here coincide, and craftsmanship reaches the farthest 
bounds of art. The drawing is on the whole big, sure and spirited, but 
only seldom careful and subtle: more usually the rough tather slapdash 
execution points to the rapid methods which we associate with wholesale 


eh, wah as, 
eg MT LL Oe ee a 


rates sae a 


production. ; 
Fig.59 Very different is a nameless painter who worked in the fa@tory of “a 
Hieron during its later phase. He has no particularly close conneétion 4 
with Makron: here and there a detail recalls Maktron, but on the whole aS 
he is as different both in spirit and in draughtsmanship as possible. , " 
Measured by the standard of ripe archaic beauty of line and mastery of = 
form, he must appear a bungler, for his misdrawings and uglinesses go ‘i a 
beyond Makron’s. But there is far too much expression, motion and n. 
observation in his pictures for that: he is really a forerunner of the s 
naturalistic movement in early classical art. For beauty and academic 4 
correctness he cared nothing, for truth and expression everything. His i 
skinny figures with theit convulsive movements look almost like a protest A 
i 


against the deliberate ignoring of such phenomena, phenomena which, 
after all, are actually more frequent in nature than regular beauty and 
thythmic motion. We content ourselves with a glance at the tondo of 
a cup which is decorated outside with further scenes from the sack of 
Troy. It shows a man fleeing wildly with a boy on his shoulders clinging 
to his head ; a thrilling pi@ure of the hortors of one of those nights of 
massacte, with which the Greeks of the fifth century were only too familiar. 
If the intentions of the two artists were not so different, one might call our 


Cea 


S 
hs. 
=o 
a 
i? 
~ 


5O 


ARCHAIC RED-FIGURE : DOURIS 


painter more individual and more important than Makron. But the 
petsonal element is thrown into the background by the strong conviction 
that two intellectual tendencies and two epochs here touch and patt. 

We have already mentioned the name of Douris. Dozens of signed Figs. 60-65 
vases enable us to trace his career from the turn of the century down to the 
seventies ; unsigned vases take us still later; and the signatures, in con- 
junction with the love-names, provide us with a unique documentary basis 
for what has been called the noblest task of the historian of art, to associate 
ptogtess in a great department of intellectual life with the destiny of 
individual men. But our pleasure is not unalloyed. Douris is a master 
of decorative elegance, a craftsman of unsurpassable technical excellence, 

a brilliant draughtsman of the abstract linear type. But he cannot compare 

with true artists like Euphronios or Brygos. He has his own specific 
qualities, it is true, as a draughtsman in the higher sense and as an illustrator, 

but they are the qualities of an academician, and they are often combined 

with a certain ecle€ticism: one can trace his dependence now upon this 
model, now upon that, even long after his artistic handwriting had 
acquired its fixed and unmistakable character. Occasionally he succeeded 

in producing works of perfect unity and convincing expression like the 
Quarrel over the Weapons of Achilles: here the question of the model Figs. 62-63 
recedes before the impression that this is a Douris through and through : 

no other could have made the pictures at once so rhythmic and decorative 

and so animated and expressive. The Herakles fighting with the Amazons Fig. 60 
does not stand so high: Douris was more concerned with symmetry and 
balance than with convincing statement of fa&s. The charm of these 
pictures lies in the decorative composition, the subtlety of the line, and 

the slender elegance of the figures. Elsewhere the theme itself made it 
easiet to transform even a sevetely rhythmical row of figures into a lively 
picture. Thus the justly famed school-scenes are only a variation, richer Fig. 65 
in content, of the typical ‘ conversation scenes.’ Music, tecitation and 
writing-lessons can hardly have gone on simultaneously in a real class- 
room: but the artist has attained a higher reality, life within the picture. 
Douris, like Makron, seldom merely repeats himself in his rows of figures, 

but such pleasing creatures as the beat-leader nervously listening to the 
recitation ate quite exceptional: his decorativeness was not favourable 

to strong individualisation. ; . 

The Eos with the body of her son Memnon, in the interior of a cup, Fig. 64 
seems to form an exception to this estimate. It is a genuine Pieta, in 
which the depth of feeling and intensity of expression are hardly impaired 
by one ot two touches of archaic naiveness like the position of Memnon’s 


51 


ARCHAIC RED-FIGURE: PISTOXENOS 


legs. But here more than anywhere else we may be sure that the creation 

is the work not of Douris but of another and a greater. The space- 

filling as such is extremely imperfect, the composition nevertheless cramped 

and the general effe&t as undecorative as can be. Douris has put up with 

all that because he wanted to reproduce on his cup a work of art, probably 

a panel or a wall-painting, which must have attracted attention at the time. 

The voids he filled with inscriptions, one of which appeats to be coatse. 

The man who invents or even feels such a picture does not scribble 

obscenities beside it. And so the cup with the quarrel for the arms 

Figs. 61-63 temains his masterpiece. The pi€tures on the outside are models of 

decorative symmetry, which is nevertheless justified by the subjeé& and 

Fig. 62 filled with expression. In the first pi€ture we see on the ground the 

precious legacy of Achilles, his arms. How the greaves come to stand 

uptight we must not ask, either here or in the interior: the fac is that 

we ate meant to see them clearly. Ajax and Odysseus are quarrelling 

which is the more worthy to inherit the arms. The wild Ajax wishes to 

plead his cause with the sword: half-armed, his corslet still open, he flies 

at Odysseus. ‘The sober Odysseus is forced to draw to defend himself, 

but other heroes hold them fast, and King Agamemnon intervenes. 

Fig. 63 The matter is referred to the vote, and in the next pi€ture we see the 

voting. Odysseus notes with excitement and gratification his ballots 

increasing, Athena watches the decision with interest: Ajax turns away 

Fig. 61 with veiled head. The picture in the interior shows the result, which 

led to the end of the wat: Odysseus hands the arms to the young son of 

Achilles, Neoptolemos. By simple means and with plain natural attitudes 

the good-will of the experienced hero and the solemnity of the youth are 
convincingly rendered. 

Fig.65 | ‘The school picture needs no further explanation. It is a late work, 

and it prepares us for one of the last creations of archaic vase-painting, a 

Figs. 66-67 bowl from the factory of Pistoxenos. This bow] tells the story of Linos, 

once the darling of the Muses, and now a middle-class music-teacher, 

how he tried to teach Herakles, and his sad end. ‘The rough boy had no 

talent for music and brained his teacher with a chair. Douris or one of e, 

his pupils drew the murder itself : but our painter gives us only a presenti- 2 

ment of the impending disaster. He shows us Herakles on the way to : 

Linos, while his half-brother Iphikles is already receiving instruétion. % 

The two pictures present a pleasing contrast. On the one side, facing ; 

each other, both with lyres, are Linos, the perfeét type of the hard, irritable, e 

elderly schoolmaster, unimaginative, joyless and deadly; and Iphikles, 

the model youth, looking up at his master from under his brows in a 


52 


Cl It,” Pe oe 


erry Tae 


7 ee ae 


ARCHAIC RED-FIGURE: PISTOXENOS 


kind of gentle alarm, and pursing the corners of his mouth in his con- 
centration. The whole effect is given by the poise of Iphikles’ head, his 
almond-eye with the pupil drawn up, the furrow in his cheek, and by the 
wide-open eye of Linos as he watches his pupil’s fingers with wrinkled 
brow and peevishly protruding lips. A glance at the other pidture 
suggests that the lesson will not end well. Herakles is coming, too 
late, naturally, with a huge arrow as a walking-stick. He is in no hurty : 
he is taking shorter steps than the bent old body who carries his lyre for 
him. There is reluétance and defiance in the back-thrown shoulders and 
the pout of the lower lip, choler in the charaéteristic bull’s eye. And 
then the bull-neck, and the curly pate: one feels somehow that the 
sufferings of many other lads will be avenged on the hated pedant, once 
Linos scolds him or lays hand on him, as sooner or later he must. It 
is superfluous to suppose that the old woman is urging him on or even 
advising him to make haste ; she knows better, and is no doubt glad to 
keep her breath for her walk. The old woman, a Thracian slave to judge 
from her tattooing, is a brilliant study in naturalism, but compared with 
the subtlety of psychological characterisation in the other figures she seems 
a slighter performance than they; for wrinkled ugliness is easier seized 
than delicacies of expression in the type of handsomeness. This type 
appeats in all its purity in Herakles and Iphikles. In Linos the forehead 
is slightly individualised and the nose was probably so, but here also the 
expression is obtained by the simplest means, by tiny displacements in 
eye and mouth and by the carriage of the body. The drawing still retains 
the archaic simplicity and the archaic severity of line, but little else that is 
atchaic. In the old woman even the almond-eye is given up, but the iris 
is still drawn as a complete circle, which gives the appearance of a slight 
squint. Our painter was not a draughtsman of the same calibre as 
Euphronios or Brygos ; and even if he had wished he could hardly have 
attained the unerring elegance of Douris. His strength lies in the success- 
ful study of the expression of the individual personality: this important 
element in the transition from archaic to classical art he rfepresents 
brilliantly. 

Very little remains in Greece of archaic monumental painting: and 
not a single wall-painting. It is otherwise in Etruria. Etruscan art is 
an offshoot of Greek: in Etruria not only sanctuaries but great tomb- 
chambers were decorated with mutal paintings, and a branch from the 
tree of Greek wall-painting is thus preserved to us in substantial remains. 
It is true that the sap in the branch is not all the original sap. A Greek 
scion has been grafted on to a strange tree, and it is only occasionally that 


53 


EARLY CLASSICAL ART 


we have the sensation of seeing before us, in the work of an immigrant 
Greek, such a scion fresh-cut from the tree of Hellenic art. ‘The most 
important ripe archaic paintings of this kind, the friezes of the Stackelberg 
Tomb at Corneto-Tarquinii, have suffered severely in the century or so 
since their discovery, and old drawings and water-colours are but an 
imperfect substitute for what we have lost. We content ourselves here 
Fig. 68 with an extrac from a frieze in a later tomb, where Greek stylistic forms 
ranging over half a century appear side by side. It illustrates the saying 
that the archaic style of the Greeks was long the classical style of the 
Etruscans. The subject is a dance ina grove. The grove is indicated, 
symbolically rather than pidtorially, by plants and small animals. The 
movement of the girl has a grand swing which recalls red-figured vase- 
(Figs. 44, paintings. As on the vases, the figures extend from top to bottom of the | 
57 58) frieze: but we also find a few free landscapes with small figures; and the . 
frieze-bands developed into pictures covering the whole wall. From 4 
this it was but a step to the great wall-pi@tures of early classical art. - 
These wall-paintings are lost: and thete is only one parallel work “_ 
which can give us some notion of their spirit, and in some measure of : 
their form: the sculptures of the Temple of Zeus at Olympia. ‘This is — 
not the place to dwell upon these : we are confined in the first instance to 3 
vase-pictures, and it is only after the middle of the fifth century that we : 
set foot in the realm of monumental att. The vase-paintings themselves, a 
as was Stated in the Introduétion, show the influence of the monumental a 
paintings of Mikon, Polygnotos and their circle. But that does not 
mean anything like what it would have meant in the archaic period. 
The beauty and importance of many classical vase-pi@tures must not 4 
deceive us: vase-painting no longer plays the part in the classical style ‘f 
which it played in the archaic. In a word, in the best works of the severe 
red-figute style we have archaic beauty itself, in those of the classical — 
ted-figure style we have only a refleCtion of classical beauty, From the Py 
very nature of the classical style, decorative, applied art is no longer on the of é 
same level as the high works of monumental art, but sinks to the rank 
of modest handicraft ; and in vase-painting, even more than elsewhere, 
the technique and the decorative purpose were now felt to be cramping. 


This has been mentioned already: it is true primarily of the red-figure ¥ 
Style, but also, in less measure, of the most precious creations of white- ee 
ground painting, the sepulchral lekythoi. The lekythoi are gems of : 
Attic fifth-century art : but all the same no more than a refle@ion of monu- _ 


mental art is transmitted to us by these humble produéts of the lowest 
tank of painting. But all we have remaining of the gteat art which over- 


14 


EARLY CLASSICAL ART 


shadowed vase-painting is a few sculptures, and even the most glorious 
teliefs are no substitute for the drawing alone of the monumental painting 
which has disappeared. But out knowledge of the sculpture should 
enable us to overlook the weaknesses and imperfections of the vase-paint- 
ings, and to feel the greatness which not only overshadows them but 
shines through them, seldom in all its original brightness, but seldom 
quite decomposed. One may refuse to enjoy the pure form in classical 
vase-painting without reserve, or restrict oneself to a few vases, mostly 
white-ground, of Cimonian and Periclean times: but the expression 
in a great number of pictures is irresistible. ‘The naive emphatic manner 
of archaic art has given place to such a deepened sense of the inner life 
that one feels as if art had caught up at one bound the wide interval which 
had divided it from Homer and Sappho. 

It could not be otherwise, for in the sweltering storm of the great 
Persian war the slowly ripened fruit of Greek humanity had burst its husk. 
The people had awakened to the consciousness of a maturity so free and 
so magnificent that all the achievements of the admired Orient paled 
before it. At Salamis and Plataea the despotic might of Asia shattered 
itself against the will-power of the free humanity of Hellas. The soul of 
Hellenic resistance was Athens: Athens, which, occupied and destroyed 
by the Persians, lived on free and strong in her citizens. ‘ The thought 
of the all-outweighing importance of man was the new contribution made 
by victorious democratic Athens to the historic development of mankind,’ 
says Julius Lange in the introdudtion to his wonderful appreciation of the 
Parthenon frieze. ‘This great experience made the Greek serious. The 
times of naive joy in life, of youthful gaiety were over: their statues 
smile no more, and even of Pericles Plutarch says that no man saw him 
laugh. ‘Their costume also became serious and simple, for the same spirit 
of austere and simple grandeur came over every aspect of life. The 
paths of poetty and figurative art ran closer to each other than ever 
before. Polygnotos and Pheidias stand beside Aeschylus and Sophocles 
on equal terms, not only as creators of form but as speakers to the heart. 
Thus Athens, rescued by the political genius of Themistocles, and guided 
by Pericles who embodied the classical spirit in his life, became the Hellas 
of Hellas. Thete is a deep significance in Pindar’s praise of Athens: the 
last prophet of the perishing Dorian aristocracy, that great severe structure 
in which the strength of archaic Hellas lay, greeted the new spirit which 
has created the world that is outs. 


We begin with a group of vase-pictures which in more than one Figs. 69-73 


respect point beyond vase-painting to monumental art. There ate good 


55 


EARLY CLASSICAL VASES 


reasons for supposing, though it has been disputed, that they are all from 
a single hand. This painter worked in the fattory of Euphronios in the 
seventies ; one of his earliest pieces bears the signature of Euphronios as 
potter and the name of the fair Glaukon, probably a son of the same 
Leagros who had been celebrated a generation before. Both names can 
be restored, though not with certainty, on a fragmentary white-ground 
Fig. 69 cup from the Acropolis. Our illustration gives only the most important 
fragments without attempting to arrange them. ‘The subje& is the 
death of the singer Orpheus, who fell a victim to the rage of the Thracian 
women. ‘Taken by surprise, he sinks on his knee and vainly endeavours 
to defend himself with his lyre. The Thracian woman is tattooed like 
(Fig. 66) the old slave in the pi€tute by Pistoxenos; streaks on the neck and an 
animal on the atm. ‘The head-type is that of the transitional period, just 
as we find it in the statues of the tyrant-slayers made in 478 and on Syracusan 
coins of those years: there is the same simple and austere grandeur, the 
last term of a long evolution. The power of the massive lower part of 
the face and the noble outline of the skull blend with the subtle animation 
of the profile-line and the wealth of hair to form a complete harmony : 
severe grandeur, inward life, and festal adornment enhance each other. 
At last the profile eye looks, and looking guides our eyes to the speaking 
outline: the direétion of the look is still somewhat undecided because | 
the iris is drawn as a full circle as if seen from the front: in this these i 
(Fig. 51) eyes Still lag behind the anachronistic eye of the old Sosias cup ; it is only : 
in the indication of the skin of the upper lid that they outdo it. The hair 


is treated pictorially enough not to tell any more as ornament. Sa 

Our fragments are masterpieces of early classical drawing. But it - 4 

is only in an entire pi€ture that the whole capacity of the new Style is a 

(Fig. 70) disclosed. ‘The Aphrodite cup, a somewhat later work, in which the 
drawing already aims at the classical profile, still bears the name of Glaukon. “ 


The whole promise of the Orpheus cup is hete fulfilled, and over and 
above that a new note sounds in our eats, the note of the lyric mood. 
The lady is no longer a beauty like another: it is the goddess hetself 
revealed. The noble simplicity of the drawing, the lofty calm of the 3 
bearing, are animated with life from within: the eye looks; the half- ‘ 
indeterminate attitude of the hands seems to contain the immanence of a 
delicate motion. We have seen that the archaic vase-painters had good 
cause for clinging tenaciously to the formal non-perspeétive drawing of hs 
the eye; it made it easy for them to give a great variety of expressions. ei. 
But these were mostly the naive emphatic expressions of the archaic style : i 
the look which speaks the soul could not be rendered until the post-archaic ee 


56 


EARLY CLASSICAL VASES 


Style. Not till then did the look acquire real dire€tion ; not till then could 
men look deep or sharply into each othet’s eyes or let their gaze range far 
away, and the eye become the gate of the soul. Painting had an advan- 
tage overt sculpture in this respect owing to the different nature of its task ; 
and thus the fame of the high ethos of Polygnotan painting rang through 
all antiquity. Ethos is the spiritual complement of the formal qualities 
of the classical style. We have no word for it. Mood, measure, loftiness 
and dignity are as much part of it as the noble modesty, unconscious of 
its own beauty, with which the Idolino pours his libation. Speaking 
in general terms, it is the external aspect of the noble soul as Pericles 
embodied it, Winckelmann’s noble simplicity and quiet grandeur, but not 
only when the spirit is at rest, for it is also the preservation of carriage 
and control even in stormy motion and excitement. In this sense the 
figurative att of the period is as well acquainted with passion as Aeschylus 
and Sophocles: but the pathos is subdued and ennobled by ethos. It 
was not until the sophists and the Peloponnesian War that the Greek 
soul lost its balance: uncontrolled passion and sweet self-indulgence 
divided it, and only the inherited nobility of form covers and conceals 
the internal disruption. 

Nothing is mote significant of the deepened psychological insight 
with which the classical style begins its course than the way in which 
Polygnotos, in the face of a powerful artistic tradition, represented the 
destruction of Troy: not the raging night of massacre with its abundance 
of movement and its violent contrasts of expression, but the atmosphere 
of the morning after the storm, with little ation to stir it, and a multitude 
of subtlest gradations; not Ajax’s brutal assault on Cassandra, but the 
oath he takes in the presence of the leaders of the host. Neoptolemos 
alone was still seen murdering, like the last flame of a great fire which is 
smouldering out. Polygnotos’ treatment of the Slaying of the Suitors 
was similar. The slaughter and the unequal combat were over. 

In a many-figured picture on a krater, of which we can give only an Fig. 77 
extract, there is a strong echo of the art of psychological atmosphere as 
it was displayed in the great mural paintings. Herakles and Athena are 
seen sutrounded by resting heroes: a picture of pure existence without 
action, but so full of internal tension that we ask and ask ourselves what 
gteat event is here casting its shadow. The Argonauts marooned in 
Lemnos and now awaking to fresh exploits, or the Attic heroes on the 
fateful morning of Marathon—we do not know which the Paris krater 
represents, if either: but we feel the spirit of Polygnotan painting in the 
atmosphere of the picture even more than in the composition or in the 


H +7 


EARLY CLASSICAL VASES 


Polygnotan devices of facial expression. In the composition not only is 
the old common standing-line abandoned for the first time in vase-painting, 
and the rule that the figures shall reach from top to bottom of the field 
broken: but the background no longer tells as a plane surface; besides 
the foreshortenings of the figures we have the recession into depth of 
the total space in which they are set. Although the painter has tendered 
the hilly terrain by white lines and thus adapted it to the limited resources 
of red-figure technique ; although he has composed the principal group 
so thythmically that it can be taken in at a glance ; although, unlike others, | 
he has avoided the superpositions and intricate grouping of monumental Aa 
painting for the sake of clearness of outline and equable distribution of | 
light and dark: in spite of all that he has half destroyed the surface 

he set out to decorate; and surface and space intermingling produce an 
impossible hybrid. The sitting man is floating over the reclining man’s 

head rather than sitting above him. The frontal shield contrasts as | 
violently with the shields seen from the side as if it were a piece of flat h 
ornament. Recognising what their real task was, and what means they a 
had at their disposal, the red-figure painters went no farther in this direction. ; 
They tetained, indeed, the half-spatial distribution of the figures on the | 
piGture-surface, but it soon became a decorative formula, so schematic Ss 
that it assured the predominance of the effect of flatness over the effect 
of space, especially as later generations are accustomed to far stronger 
spatial effects in monumental painting. 

Side by side with the great pictures of lyrical atmosphere, battle- 
pi@ures with wild movement were never lacking. The Painted Porch 
at Athens contained, besides the Sack of Troy by Polygnotos, the Battle 
of Marathon by Panainos, and its mythical counterpart, the Amazonomachy 
by Mikon: there was another Amazonomachy in the Theseion, as well 

Fig. 71 as an important Centauromachy. Classical ethos affected these pictures 
also, as is shown by one of the most monumental works in Greek vase- ; 
painting, a huge cup in which the great figures almost burst the round. ee 
Four warriors bring the whole battle almost eerily close to our eyes. 2 
The motive, rare in Greek art, of the actual death-blow by the sword 
driven downwards into the heart is ethically deepened by the beseeching 
look of the beautiful woman. Figurative art had now teached the Stage 
at which it could take up the Penthesilea motive from the old poem. i 
But our picture goes only half-way, and the bearded giant whose gaze | 
passes above hers and beyond it is an Athenian rather than the Achilles ag 
who was seized with love for the mortally wounded Penthesilea. A ee. 
dying Amazon, and even mote the hawk-look of a Greek who rushes 


58 


44 ore Sik ¥ ay 
oT eet ae eee oe 


we ee 

es z oot 
Pee tee 

eae Se eee a ee 


EARLY CLASSICAL VASES 


by, suffice to bring the tumult of battle before us. Strong overlappings, 
in spite of which the principal outlines are carefully kept clear, create an 
effet of space, which is heightened, though only to our modern feeling, 
by the gradations of size. The effect produced by the unintentional 
hatshnesses in the drawing of the victor’s arm and head, and in the 
contottion of the dying woman, is also fortuitous. Like most of the 
hatshnesses in the early classical style these are archaisms as far as they 
concern the position in the picture-plane or vertically to it : in the render- 
ing of form the only vestiges of such archaism are in the hems of the 
Amazons’ clothes ; and the profile-line has attained a classic simplicity. 

The progress can be followed step by step from the white cups with 
Orpheus and Aphrodite onwards, and further proofs of the connection 
with those earlier works are furnished by the pictures on the outside of 
the cup and the experiments in the use of patches of matt colour: dull 
red and light grey are preserved, and there may have been other tints ; 
besides this there is the yellow of the diluted glaze, and the raised gold 
details, these also an attempt to vie with monumental painting. 

The master of the Amazon cup has understood the secret of the new 
Style. His four figures show the spirit of a great monumental picture 
far better than the swarm of little fighters on a fragmentary krater which 
we reproduce in an outline sketch without the black background. Its Fig. 75 
value is that it gives us a better notion of the terraced tumult of the wall- 
paintings than the picture of the heroes with Herakles and Athena. The 
attitude of a third painter towards the style is different again. We give (Fig. 77) 
an extract from one of the friezes on his krater. A banausus and proud Fig. 76 
of it, one might say. He was not going to paint a landscape-like monu- 
mental picture on a pot, but broke the surface up into two friezes of the 
old kind—a reactionary phenomenon not uncommon at the time. 
Within this decorative framework he was anxious to show that he in his 
turn could also paint these new-fashioned Amazonomachies with their 
Strange, freshly observed motives, their rich armour and costumes, and 
their feats of perspective. But his swan-casqued knights and heroic 
maidens have something strangely cutty and coarse about them without 
being really individual or naturalistic. All that has happened is that in 
the painter’s hands the ideal types have become caricatured and plebeian- 
ised. The admirable group of the Greek collapsing before the determined 
Amazon and gogegling in terror at the axe which threatens his bared head, 
almost reminds us of Dutch pictures of chawbacons. How expressive 
the eyes ate in both figures, the mouths, the attitudes and movements, 
and how effective the high short skull with the lank hair! It is hardly an 


es 


EARLY CLASSICAL VASES 


accident that the noble type is least contaminated where the painter has 
had to pull himself together, in the quite successful three-quarter faces. 
A more emphatic manner was more natural to him, and it comes out even 
in the stopgaps on the reverse, where friend and foe hurtle past each 
other at the double without engaging. ‘This painter has even drawn a 
rider from behind, by purely ideographic devices without any teal fore- 
shortening, and made the figure not only fairly convincing from the point 
of view of perspective, but distin@ly expressive. Yet the effe& of depth 
does not strike one at a hasty glance, and so does not make a hole in the 
wall of the vase. Looking closer, one seems to see that the Amazon 
is springing somewhat sideways to the left, while she like her horse looks 
to the right as she digs her heels into his flanks. ‘These are the two ways 
the picture was meant to be looked at : it was not painted for archeologists 
who can peer still closer, and coldly, crudely pluck the painter’s blossom 
to pieces. , 
This droll picture has taken us far from the master of the great Amazon 
Fig.72cup. Let us look at another work of his, the Tityos cup. The giant 
Tityos assaulted Apollo’s mother Leto and now succumbs to the avenging 
god. The mother of 'Tityos, the earth-goddess Ge, has raised herself 
up as on the Pergamene frieze, but cannot move Apollo to relent. The 
eatly archaic representations of the subject are exceedingly naive: Apollo 
and Artemis rush up on foot or in a chariot and launch their arrows at 
the offender, while Tityos and his mother make off at full speed. In 
the ripe archaic style the treatment of the subject is larger, and already 
approximates to our picture: the wounded Tityos sinks on his knees — 
at the feet of Ge and extends his atm towards Apollo imploring mercy ; 
Apollo, unmoved, feels for a second atrow. But it is still the emphatic 
archaic manner without deeper spiritual content. Our painter is the 
first to give his picture inward grandeur and ethical depth, and a further, 
unintentional effec&t is produced, to our eyes, by a vestige of archaic 
affectation in Ge, as she blenches at Apollo’s look; it heightens the 
expressiveness of the principal group—the vengeful wrath of the tall 
young god, and the terror of the defenceless giant. Finally we glance 
Fig. 73 at the exterior of a small cup by our master. It is decorated with the same 
swift Studies of youths and horses as many other cups by him, including _ 
(Fig. 47) most of his big cups. The relation is the same as in the Amazon krater 
by Euphronios: the principal pi€ture monumental and severe in style, — 
the other easy studies from nature. The horses especially show keen 
observation without the least concession to ideal beauty, as can just be 
made out in our reproduction. The composition is particularly decorative, 


Go 


RARLY CLASSICAL VASES 


almost heraldic, and brilliantly adapted to the shape of the vase. In 
more than one respect the painter is a second Euphronios : and he painted 
in the factory of Euphronios, at any rate at first. Can he even be the old 
Euphronios himself, capable, if any man, of this last and greatest change ? 
It is not probable, but not impossible. The enigma of his much-discussed 
petsonality is unsolved. 

We mentioned a Centauromachy among the mural paintings of the 
Polygnotan circle; and a number of centauromachies on vases show the 
influence of monumental painting. We reproduce the most important Fig. 74 
specimen. ‘The painter gives us an extraordinary blend of expressiveness 
and beauty. The opponents of the woodland monsters are not heavy- 
armed watriors as in earlier art: the wedding-feast of Peirithoos lent 
itself better to an ethical treatment, and the painter has availed himself 
of its possibilities to the full. Armed only with the trained strength 
and skill of their splendid athletic bodies, and with the superiority of 
intelligence over brute force, the Greek youths cope with the gnashing 
monsters in whom the beast has mastered the man. And this contrast, 
Strong and deep both in form and in expression, is accompanied by a 
second contrast no less ethical in its content : between the tense, towering 
youth and the rushing centaur a maiden lies on the ground, her garment 
half torn from her breast, her head averted and her arm extended, beauti- 
fully and expressively, in a great gesture of horror and self-defence. 
The motive in itself is archaic, and the dominant of the outstretched arm 
is Struck as early as Euthymides and Euphronios and later in monumental 
att as well, down to the discobolos of Myron: but compare our figure 
with the fallen Amazon on the krater of Euphronios in Arezzo, and see (Fig. 47) 
how the drapery and the general context enhance the expression. The 
interweaving of the groups and figures is masterly, and the main group 
attracts the eye so forcibly that we do not mind the boldness with which 
the frame cuts off the whole forepart of one of the figures—the kicking 
centaur who tecurs on the frieze of the Phigaleian temple and elsewhere. 
The fighters make weapons of tables, vessels and any piece of furniture 
they can lay their hands on; and no doubt did so in the original wall- 
painting. 

The naturalistic traits in archaic vase-painting condensed into a real 
artistic movement at the turn from the archaic to the classical style ; we 
saw this in one of the artists who painted for Hieron, and in Pistoxenos (Figs. 59, 
as well. ‘The feeling for truth and expressiveness and the desire to escape ©) 
from the tyranny of traditional types led to the deliberate quest for ex- 
ptessive ugliness. Archaic art, grown old, plunged into that Fountain 


61 


EARLY CLASSICAL VASES 


of Youth, observation of nature, in order to emerge in new and maturer 
Fig. 78 beauty. The head of a warrior on a krater will perhaps always remain 
the masterpiece of this movement. For portrait quality, physical or 
psychic, no Hellenistic or Roman portrait surpasses it. We can judge 
from this how individual the chatatterisation of the generals in the pi@ure 
of Marathon may have been. But it was not only strongly pronounced 
male heads, or old hags like the slave in Pistoxenos, that could now be 
characterised. The forms of fair women, which ate less easy to catch, 
might also receive individual treatment : Polygnotos is said to have figured 
Kimon’s sister, Elpinike, among his Trojan women, The individualisa- 
tion even of beautiful female heads is significant of the progress from 
archaic vase-painting : the new age can dete& what is individual in form 
and expression even when it does not wish to produce a violent effect. 
In the early classical style the old emphatic manner retreats to the sphere 
within which it is countenanced in every age—caricature. A brilliant 
Fig. 79 example is the picture of the poet Aesop listening to the fox. 
With the picture of Aesop we leave for a moment the realm of monu- 
Fig. 80 mental painting : our next pi€ture brings us back. The pair of maenads 
moving forward with their arms round each other’s necks comes from 
a Dionysiac frieze-pi€tute in which the other figures are not very remark- 
able either in movement or in expression, and helps us to imagine the effe@ 
of Polygnotan female groups. What a change from the maenads of 
(Fig. 20) Amasis in barely thtee generations! Not only is the formal connexion 
of the two figures now perfect, but there is a depth of feeling and refine- 
ment in them to which even the maturest archaic style was insensible. 
The one woman, the leader, strides forward upright in her severe Doric 
peplos, gripping the neck of the snake coiled round her arm, and turning 
het head towards her friend who is clad in the soft flowing Ionic chiton 
and clings timorously to her, with downcast eyes. Two charaéters, two 
temperaments, revealing their diversity under the influence of the same 
mood: that is art beyond our master’s, however much credit we give 
(Figs. 71- him for reproducing it so well. Here also there is an accidental effe& 
7?) as in the great cups: the austerity of the leader seems heightened by the 
harshnesses, still normal at the period, in the three-quartering of her 
face. ‘The comparative frequency of the three-quarter face in the early 
classical style is due to the influence of monumental painting; in the 
Periclean period it retires again in favour of the pure profile, which is — 
far better suited to the linear and decorative conditions of vase-painting, 
and not until the late red-figure period is it used commonly and with 
unhampered freedom. | 


62 


EARLY CLASSICAL VASES 


Another sign of the powerful impression made by monumental 
painting in the generation after the Persian wars is that its influence 
appeats where one would least expeét to find it, in the miniature-like 
drawing on small vases. Whatever is small and fine, the life of women 
and children in particular, which the monumental art of the high style 
had left almost untouched, was the peculiar department of the vase- 
painters, the bronze-workers, and the other masters of small decorative 
att. They gave it the form appropriate to the spirit of the new age. 

They pouted over it an inexhaustible abundance of piquancy and grace, 
of lytic feeling and lovely fancy, and in their own sphere raised even 
such a memorial of their age as the painters of the white lekythoi in theirs. 
From the life and love of woman, treated with a fascinating mixture of 
truth and poetry, we pass insensibly into the circles of Aphrodite and 
Dionysos. In these circles the Erotes, under various names, live and 
work and play, and with the high style they even penetrate into the 
woman’s quartets of the citizen’s house. Such subjects gained in im- 
portance as the vase-painters came to realise the distance between their 
own att and monumental painting. Up to the middle of the fifth century 
the way is hardly trodden, though already prepared. One modest Fig. 81 
example is actually connected with the archaic period through the name 
of the potter Hegesiboulos, whose factory already existed in 500. The 
little cup is extremely light and fine in make; the shape is based on a 
metal model; the technique is peculiar, for the white-ground picture 
is surrounded by a zone of bright red glaze. The little pi€ture is not 
particularly fine in execution, but very charming: set freely in the circle, 
a gitl watching a top spinning, whip in hand; the movement successfully 
caught, and straight out of nature. A similar figure appears on a perfume- 
pot, grouped with a second top-spinner; and only slightly modified 
on a hydria, playing knuckle-bones : it may have come from the monu- 
mental painting of the time. The game of skill in which the knuckle-bones 
of small animals are used is still a favourite in the south, and we know 
it to have occurted in ancient wall-painting ; two maidens who had died 
young wete playing knuckle-bones in Polygnotos’ picture of the under- 
world, and we shall find it presently in a copy of a fifth-century panel. (Fag. 117) 

Like the Hegesiboulos cup but infinitely finer are the three cups of Figs. 82-84 
Sotades. ‘They are all unique in their way, the Glaukos in subjeét, the 
Death of Archemoros in drawing, and the Apple-pickers as a whole picture, 
in drawing and in conception. The picture of the Apple-pickers is in- Fig. 32 
complete: there seems to have been a second figure on the other side of 
the tree, under the overhanging boughs, no doubt collecting the apples. 


63 


EARLY CLASSICAL VASES : SOTADES 


The picture has the same fragrance as Sappho’s simile of the reddening 
apple which the apple-gatherers forgot, nay, could not reach. The 
freshest feeling for nature embodied in the plainest and purest forms : 
the lyric mood in mere human things for the first time in Greek art. ‘The 
feeling for natute which we here see taking hold of figurative art has the 
same freshness of untouched youth as the slender child who stretches so 
expressively and yet so prettily up to the topmost branch of the tender 
tree; holding her thin chiton delicately ; unconsciously, following the 
motion, her lips part, and the step she took to stand on tiptoe still rustles 
in her dress. The light vesture clings to the blossoming body and flows 
ot ripples round the translucent forms: all this is no more new than it 
was in Polygnotos, who was famed for his drapery, and yet compared 
with the archaic treatment and the red-figure technique it has a new 
directness of effe& and the drawing is full of piforial values. Sense of 
nature and lyrical content in a language which is master of every subtlety 
of drawing and is beginning to feel piftorially as well, and over it all a 
peculiar charm of unconsciousness—that is what makes this work unique. 
The best way of realising what is new is to compate similar things in the 

(Figs. 48, archaic style. ‘The frail Theseus of Euphronios, the fleeing Astyanax of 

__ 52) Brygos ot his gitl flying from the wicked king or god, his kindly hetaira 

(Figs. : 5 in the gently waving chiton, and many another pi&ture—expressive and 
subtle as the feeling and the drawing is in these, it is not yet feeling for 
its own sake, or drawing that retires behind its effe@. And even if we 
take the most unpretentious athletic motive, or a gitl holding a flower, 
in the archaic style it is always the formal motive and the successful 
observation that appeal to us (not to speak of the drawing as such), 
never, as here, nature and feeling, sheer and dite@, which it is after all i ee 
the sole objec of draughtsmanship to convey to us full and pure. As a ee 
draughtsman Brygos had already set foot on the path which leads hither, — 
and that is what makes him the master of expression: but as an artist — 
even Brygos still belonged to another age: not only are archaic emphasis 
and classical feeling incompatible, but they do not flourish in the same 
soil. It is the new spirit that has found its form in Sotades. 

The new age gave a new life to the element of landscape in its pidutes. 
Thete are charming trees and shrubs in the late black-figure style and in 
Etruscan tomb-pi€tures (the red-figure style was hampered byits technique), 
but not only are they treated decoratively rather than pidorially, and 
seldom fused with the human figutes into a real landscape, but above all 
they ate not united with the figures by such a feeling for nature as we 
find in our cup. There is expressiveness in the storm-bowed palm-tree — 


64 


EARLY CLASSICAL VASES : SOTADES 


in an archaic picture of the destruction of Troy, but how much more 
direct is the effec of the reeds in the Archemoros of Sotades, and how much Fig. 83 
gteatet its importance in a composition which is unusually free and almost 
too unsymmetrical for the circular field! We feel the space in it even 
mote than in the Apple-pickers, for the high reeds stand to one side, there 
is more ait-space above the figures, and the figures are much smaller. 
An expressive diagonal runs across the picture, from the huge snake high 
in the clump belching white steam, through Hippomedon who starts back 
with a stone in his hand, to Hypsipyle sunk on her knees, beside whom 
one hand of the dead child Archemoros remains. We can feel how the 
snake has shot and will shoot again; his jaws threaten, and the reed- 
heads threaten like spear-heads. It is as if the piercing look of Hippo- 
medon held the snake for a moment spellbound—the decisive moment 
which gives him time to fling his stone. The effect of his look is height- 
ened by the intense excitement in his extremely individual features. This 
naturalistic Study in this place, a boorish huntsman in a skin and a fur 
cap instead of one of the seven knights who rode against Thebes, is most 
characteristic of the early classical style, which we see here in its highest 
refinement, just before the Periclean period, or perhaps at the beginning 
of it. In pictorial devices this cup goes even farther than the others. 
The shading and modelling of the fur would be done in much the same 
way by a modern etcher or wood-engraver. Even the smoke-clouds, 
which, following an old practice, are in relief, hardly impair the pictorial 
effect, for they are fairly compatible with the linear drawing which, after 
all, still dominates the whole. 

As a picture the Glaukos is naive. Its main charm lies in the rendering Fig. 84 
of the subject-matter. It is the story of the boy Glaukos, who died. 
His father Minos took the seer Polyidos and shut him up with the body 
in the tomb. There Polyidos killed a snake and noticed that its fellow 
revived it with a herb: he took the herb and brought Glaukos to life. 
The painter wishes to show the great tomb both from the outside and 
from the inside, and he has therefore made a curious blend of elevation, 
section and ground-plan. This is asking too much of us: though we 
can easily see that Glaukos and Polyidos are in the grave, not in front of 
it, it needs exact knowledge of the legend to tell us that the seer is aiming 
at one of the snakes with his spear. ‘That the boy does not look like 
a contracted burial, but watches the prelude to his revival as if he were 
alive, was even mote teadily intelligible to the painter’s contemporaries 
than the view of the interior of the tomb. It is charming to see how 
the delicate curves of the figures, set unevenly in the space, fit into the 


I 65 


WHITE LEKYTHOI 


cutvature, indicated by slight shading, of the tomb. In the muffled boy 
the purplish-brown garment has the same value as a means of expression 
which it often has in the sepulchral lekythoi. This solution of a problem 
insoluble to fifth-century art is like an echo of archaic naiveness on the 
verge of the Periclean age. But after all, classical art always retained a 
happy measure of artistic naiveness in face of reality; and unless we 
realise that, we shall not do justice even to its greatest and purest works 
like the frieze of the Parthenon. 

Figs. 84-87 We turn to the last and most notable development of white-ground 
painting, the sepulchral lekythoi. We spoke of their technique in the 
introduction, and of their artistic importance at the beginning of our 
consideration of classical vase-painting. They will be discussed here 
at somewhat greater length than the aCtual explanation of our illustrations 
seems to require: but in the lekythoi, if anywhere, the part is only in- 
telligible in connection with the whole. These slender oil-vessels served 
only for the cult of the dead, and therefore did not need to be durable. 
When the body was laid on the bier, they were set beside it, open, to let 
the fragrance of their contents escape: oil was poured on the pyre and 
the vessels thrown inta&t or broken on the flames; others were laid in 
the grave, often the only vestige of once numerous grave-gifts; the 
gravestone was anointed and the vessels placed on the tomb as a dedica- 

Figs. 87, 97 tion, as we see in two of our pictures. In one they alternate with the little 
jugs used for the libation to the dead; wreaths are put round them, 
branches and a woollen fillet fastened to the monument. Above, in the 
field, are more lekythoi, a mirror and a fillet, hanging on nails which we — 
may think of as fastened in the wall of the tomb precin@. The grave has 
been decorated for a festival of the dead, evidently by the gitl who sets 
her foot on the lowest step and holds the basket in which she has brought 
the things: there are still a few wreaths in it. In the other pi@ure fillets 
hang down out of the basket, and the girl holds a perfume-vase of another 

Fig. 86 shape, an alabastron. A third picture shows a lekythos in the girl’s hand. 
The perishableness even of the dedications set outside the tomb is parallel 
to the burning of the sacrificial flesh and of the grave-gifts, including 
clothes, and the shattering of vessels after use: they ate not only with- 
drawn thereby from earthly use but appropriated to the dead. That is the 
underlying idea, but the idea is already faded by classical times: the tradi- 
tional usages went on, and some of them still survive. Other ideas mixed 
with them, and thus the ephemeral decorations of the interment and the 
festival of the dead were turned into permanent memorials—monumental 
lekythoi of marble with the same kind of reliefs as the other tombstones, 


66 


WHITE LEKYTHOI 


Like the reliefs, the pictures, and the statues on the tombs, the lekythoi 
are gaily coloured. It is the opposite of what we are accustomed to. 
Black prevailed in the vessels of the living, bright colours in the cult of 
the dead, in the lekythoi just as in the tomb-monument itself and in 
the fillets fastened to it. The most symbolic colour is the strongest, red : 
the colour of the life-blood for which the soul languishes. There is 
magical power in the wool of the fillets, the leaves of the wreaths, and so 
forth. Thus the bright colour of the lekythoi must not be measured by 
our standards, and we must take into account the light hues of southern 
natute, of the art round about them, and of male and female costume. 
Then we in our turn may receive the impression of mourning from a 
dark red on the white ground of a lekythos, if the painter has intended 
to produce such an impression. Here is a picture of the dead on the bier : Fig. 90 
he is covered with ted fillets and a mantle of strong red, while a youth 
and a woman in deep red garments stand at the ends of the couch. Our 
pi@ure shows the youth only : he is muffled in his mantle as if shivering 
at the sight of the dead, head and hand only half showing out of the dark 
mass. There is the same effect in other pictures which we shall examine 
later. Our reproductions being colourless, we shall not discuss the (Figs. 92, 
colour of the lekythoi further. But we must say one thing, that it is not 95> 9° 
SO primitive as has generally been supposed. Taken together with ancient 
colouring as a whole, and with nature in the south, it is quite intelligible. 
True that we can hardly ever enjoy it undisturbed ; many of the colours 
have altered, others have disappeared, so that often all we see to-day is 
the permanent outlines of the figures and disconne¢ted patches of colour. 
Regrettable as this loss is, we should have been much worse off, if instead 
of the colour much of the outline drawing had disappeared : for line is the 
specific medium of the painter’s effects, colour only an adornment as in 
sculpture. Freed from the limitations which the chief instrument of the 
red-figure style imposed upon the movement of the lines, the painters 
could now give new life to their line, and a new expressiveness to the 
contour, which tells much more strongly on the white ground than in 
the red-figure technique. The emancipation of line-drawing from a 
technique which could not create a style of its own except in the language 
of archaic art and in the decorative, is much more important than the 
mote striking polychromy, which is not even universal in white sepulchral 
lekythoi, for it is absent in a large class of lekythoi even so late as the 
Periclean period. The independent development of lekythoi-painting 
begins about 460 with an early class of vases, which have a distinétly Fig. 85 
monumental character: large areas of lustrous black paint are still used, 


67 


WHITE LEKYTHOI 


especially in the garments, and for the female flesh a chalky white standing 

out clearly from a background which is not yet pure white; the brush- 

lines are often fairly broad. ‘There is considerable flu€tuation, as is 

natural, in this early period: style and technique are only in process of 

creation. Our picture is not typical, but important in spite of the un- 

usually hasty execution: it is dashed in with strong brush strokes like a 

fresco sketch. The subje& is the Eleusinian deities of the underworld, 

who promised immortality to the initiated: Demeter or Kore with the 

torch, and Triptolemos with sceptre and patera. Form and attitude are 

equally impressive in their simple grandeur ; the goddess especially, with 

the gteat sweep of her mantle, has the air of some statue from the neigh- 

bourhood of the sculptures of the Olympian Temple of Zeus ; in particular 

_ she makes us think of a very grand and austere work, often copied for the 
Romans, the wrongly-named Aspasia. 3 

From the austere grandeur of this springtide we pass to the pure 

beauty of the Periclean age. That age, as an artistic conception, begins 

about the middle of the fifth century. It is to the beginning of the period 

Figs. 89,94 that the most precious works of noble drawing belong. Whatever 

nobility of form, purity of line, and expressiveness of contour can attain 

is here attained, and fair form and simple noble attitude are filled with 

Fig. 94 life delicately perceived. In the wonderful pi@ure of the young wartior 

and the seated woman the whole expression is given by the simple presence 

of one fair young creature with another: the pi€ture says without words 

Fig, 89 that the young man did not come home from the wat. The other piétute 

shows a lady with her maid, who holds a box—a simple scene from house- 

hold life like many grave-teliefs. In the two generations down to the 

beginning of the fourth century the art travelled a long distance. The 

path was the path of drawing, not of painting: for a small group of 

monumental lekythoi, in a free pictorial style, does not represent the goal 

Fig. 97 of the development but an exception. Contemporary and perhaps by 

the same artists are other lekythoi, in which pure drawing holds the field : 

life and expressiveness of line sometimes rise to an almost uncanny height, 

and pictorial accessories, even the drapety, ate of little account. ‘This is 

the real goal of the development ; whither the development is tending 

is clear from the beginning, although the course is by no means along a 

single straight line. The vehicle of the beauty, and of the expression 

which becomes more and more an end in itself, is throughout the human 

form, and that alone. Compared with its line, attitude and movement, ae. 

even the drapery plays a much more modest part than in the red-figure =» 

style. In red-figure, body and drapery are in great measure equipollent 


68 


WHITE LEKYTHOI 


parts of a more or less ornamental linear stru@ture ; in the lekythoi they 
diverge. Inthe human figure the line received an access of expressiveness 
by becoming pure outline drawing, as soon as the painters abandoned that 
flat effect of chalky-white flesh on a darker background which is peculiar 
to the early class already described. In the drapery, on the other hand, 
the drawing of folds sustained a check, and henceforward it is very seldom 
anything like as detailed as it usually is in the red-figure style : the drapery Fig. 87 
normally tells as a coloured mass, in which even the outer contour has not 
the same importance as the lines of the figures. The effect of the figures 
is increased by contrast, at times to a thrilling height, when the white 
arms of a mourning maiden rise from the black drapery with a sweeping Fig. 96 
gesture, or the fine features of a dead youth, standing a quiet apparition Fig. 95 
in front of his grave, from the mantle which envelops his whole body. 
When the line tells in the drapery as well, it often plays round the body, 
which is usually drawn complete under the garment, in hasty, darting Fig. 97 
strokes with nothing ornamental about them: and the rare patterns on 
the garments ate sometimes seized by that strange life which blooms 
from the graves and makes the pictures on the lekythoi so peculiar; the 
pattern becomes a living tendril. It is owing to the same tendency to 
infuse organic life into the inorganic, that we find so few representations 
of statues and grave-teliefs on the lekythoi, and so many figures which 
seem to have wakened to life and stepped down from their monuments 
—the lady in her chair, the warrior, the hunter. The tendency is par- 
ticularly obvious in the representations of sepulchral monuments. Side 
by side with very plain stelai and tumuli, indicated by a few lines, we 
soon find florid ones of all sorts, sometimes even with pedimental reliefs 
and small statues. But the painters soon gave up such tfepresentations, 
evidently feeling that the excess impaired the effect of the figures, Stele 
and tumulus, the old Homeric tokens of the grave, came into their own 
again. ‘The Stele is at first quite simple, at most crowned with a plain 
anthemion, and decked with coloured fillets. But with the development 
of the pute lustreless painting a freer life takes hold of it: a luxuriant 
acanthus appears, which is neither stone ornament nor bronze ornament, 
not plant, but a produé of the artist’s feeling. Again, it can hardly be 
due to cutsoty drawing merely that the lines of the cornice sometimes 
cutve as if the stele were a column, for a glance at the baskets shows Fig. 97 
the same phenomenon. Once more, the outline of the tumulus often Fig. 87 
has an impossible curve: its inorganic mass is seized with organic life, 
so that we feel its upward thrust as in shaft and echinus of early Doric 
columns. It is the same spirit as gave birth to that mysterious curvature 


69 


WHITE LEKYTHOI 


of the horizontals which lends Greek monumental buildings their living 
elasticity. 

This inner life kept the style of the lekythoi from falling into the 
mannerism which appears not only in red-figured vase-painting of the 
florid style but also in post-Pheidian sculpture. If we compate, not 
hasty little lekythoi with important red-figute vases, but, as is fair, like 
with like, then there is a certain truth in a saying which is false as a general- 
isation: that red-figure painting is decorative handicraft, while lekythos- 
painting is art on a humble level. It is indeed going too far to say that 
nothing intervenes between the lekythos painter and nature, that he 
creates out of his imagination and observation and that he does not stand 
in a line of fixed craft-tradition like the red-figure painters, who con- 
structed theit figures solely of ornamental lines, carefully praGtised, and 
conditioned by the technique. Nor is it enough to admit that there 
were simple craftsmen as well as great artists among the painters of lekythoi, 
and that the line which is not bound by technique, and therefore not 

(Fig. 109) supported by it, easily goes astray. But if we compare the affeéted and 
often mawkish figures of Meidias or Aristophanes and their fellows 
with the pictures on the later lekythoi, we are forced to confess that in 
those there is much empty, dead form, and in these little ; in those hardly 
ever, in these almost always, dire expression. The painters of the 
lekythoi were in love with expression, at times even to the negle& of form ; 
they felt in the creatures of their imagination the eternal humanity which 
those creatures expressed: and hence their art has remained fresh. In 
the years of the great war, the death of the young and the strong spoke 
too penetrating a language for the feeling which it arouses to be blunted : 
there was no room on the lekythoi for artistic caprice. So it comes 
that in lekythoi we still feel the spirit of the Parthenon frieze, even when 
the atmosphere has become softer, the figures more sinuous and more 
indolent in their bearing and their movements. One may even say that 
the increasing softness of the line, in spite of the more sinuous rhythm 
of the whole figure, soon passes its climax, and the softness finally dis- 
appears just where, judging from sculpture, we should expeé it to begin, 

Fig. 97 in the grandiose lekythoi which all things considered must be supposed 
the latest. There is no softness or sweetness here, but austere grief and 
austere form, culminating, with complete unity of form and expression, 
in the three-quarter faces with their spare hard cheeks. In extant sculpture 
the work of Scopas provides the closest but not a close analogy. Behind — 
these lekythoi, we may take it, is the draughtsmanship of the great painters 
of the later fifth and earlier fourth century, who were renowned for their 


JO 


WHITE LEKYTHOI 


power of expression: theirs is the art in which pathos begins to gain 
the mastery over ethos. 

It took a long time for this strong expression of mood to develop. 
It is true that strong, even passionate and violent, expression of grief 
was no new thing in art: it is suggested on the geometric vases, and is (Fig. 1) 
evident enough in the black-figure representations of the funeral and 
the lament for the dead; and an early classical vase with sepulchral 
pictures shows us the same expression clarified and graded. What is 
new is that the effect of mourning can now be given without the sight of 
the corpse on the bier or of the wild gestures of lamentation at the bier 
ot the tomb: the picture of pure existence without action suffices to pro- 
duce the strongest atmosphere of mourning. The old subsisted beside 
the new: the old pictures, rare in lekythoi, of the corpse on the bier, and 
of the lament for the dead; and the classical pictures of persons merely Figs. 90, 93, 
ptesent side by side at the tomb. In these classical pictures we often feel 9° 
that vegetative, unconscious quality which is so noticeable in the Greek 
ritual of to-day, especially in the women, when they suddenly become 
silent, and quietly, without the least intensity or even real solemnity, 
perform a sacred usage which from childhood has been as natural to them 
as their native language. There is no pathos, no very definite expression 
even, and yet for a moment they are rapt from the world. Here the ethos 
of life coincides with that of art in its simplest form. But it needed very 
little to give a picture like this the definite expression of a particular 
mood. ‘Thus, in a vase which is not even very fine in drawing and is 
therefore not reproduced here, the dead youth returns the young woman’s 
greeting shyly, as if the sight of life in its bloom made him hesitate. 
Another picture is no less touching: the girl with the basket of gifts Fig. 95 
looks at the youth muffled in his cloak, yet he does not return her gaze, 
but looks stilly and absently in front of him. The downward look, 
emphasised by the staff, and the dark muffling garment, speak death and 
mourning. The effect is the same in another picture, but there the dead Fig. 92 
woman is walking forward and her eyes rest quietly on the girl who looks 
at her gravely, with a touch of sorrow in her mouth. Once more, the 
same in another form: the dead man is sitting quietly on the steps of his Fig. 86 
gtave, without noticing the girl with the gifts ; but she seems to see him 
and to be Startled a little; she turns away and yet looks back at him, 
and her look cuts across the wonderful compact composition along the 
line of his spear. 

The communion of dead and living in the light of the grave forms 
the culmination of a series of pictures representing the care of the tomb ; 


71 


WHITE LEKYTHOI 


from the women’s prepatations in the house to the simultaneous lament 
of living and dead. In this ‘ great common lament, sung at the pale of 
death and life, and sounding across into both worlds,’ the old realistic 
type of representation attains as idealistic a climax as the new type, the 
pure picture of mood, in the silent mourning which unites those parted 
by death. The burden of sorrow may be heavy, almost unbearable, 
and even the peace of the dead may be shaken into passionate movement : 
but a quiet melancholy, as if eased by consoling memories, may also 
brood overt the pi@ure. Again, often enough the dead man takes no 
part, and the living seem not to notice the silent guest from another world. 
It is seldom, and only in the early period, that the dead man is portrayed 

Fig. 87 as a hero in the splendour of his armed or athletic body, almost like a 
Statue. In the same period we find representations of a€tual statues and 
teliefs : these cease later, but sometimes it is as if the figure of the dead 
had detached itself from his monument : fighting warriors, riders, women 
on thrones, give us that impression. The next step is a pi@ture of a hare- 
hunt in a rocky landscape, where the gtave-stele has almost sunk to an 
accessory. _ 

Fig.97 There is much interpenetration and intetmixture. Chaton, sometimes 
a tude ferryman, sometimes as comely as a human being, and latterly full - 
of compassion for those who arte so fait and yet must die, not only waits 
for the dead on the banks of the nether world but sometimes appeats 
with his boat at the tomb itself, like Hermes the soul-condu@otr and the 
tiny souls who fluttered round the gtave in popular belief. The dead 

Fig. 97 may even be absent : Charon’s pitying look rests on a mourner bringing 
gifts. Conversely, kinsfolk appeat on the shore of Acheron: the mother 
leads her baby boy, who sees the strange ferryman with astonishment 
from the rock; and gives the little fellow a box anda bird to take with him: 
Charon even puts his hand into the basket of grave-gifts, as if they were 
meant for him: and a fillet hangs in the rushes which have followed his 
boat to the tomb. There are many variations in the Charon pi@ures. — 
Hermes may be standing motionless, or bidding the dead embark with 
an imperious gesture, or leading him to the boat by the hand. Charon 
may extend a helping hand, as he does to the little boy we spoke of, 
and to another older boy who glides past the tomb, muffled in his cloak, 
to the shore. ‘The dead may be standing shy and hesitating at the stream 
which divides the two worlds, or sitting abstrated in the boat waiting 
for fellow-passengers. Thus the great age of Athens gives a movingly 
simple manifestation of its humanity in its transfiguration of death. Even 
in the delicate transfiguration of burial, the epic otigin of the motive 


72 


WHITE LEKYTHOI 


has left hardly any traces: Thanatos and Hypnos, the spirits of death and Fig. 88 
sleep, lay not only warriors but slumbering women in the grave. And 
dominating everything is the same grand euphemism as in the Parthenon 
frieze: even here not age and suffering prevail, but youth and beauty, 
whose death and sortow ate doubly poignant. Once or twice only 

does a jatting note, as if from the depths of primitive popular feeling, 
penetrate into this quiet harmonious world: a grim hook-nosed death- 
demon chases a young woman at the tomb, and Hermes sits looking on 
without interfering. 

The imperishable phrase in the Greek epitaph, ‘so fair, and died,’ 
is the keyword of the lekythoi in a twofold sense. In the matute style 
the beauty goes without saying, and the effort is rather for expression ; 
mote stress is laid on the death, and death is the topic of nearly all the 
pictures. In the early period there is often no indication of it at all, and 
only gradually does the scene of the preparations for visiting the grave, 
developed out of simple scenes of home life, come into the foreground, 
presently to retire again in favour of scenes from the care of the tomb. 
Just as one type of sepulchral scene is mingled with another, so purely 
household scenes with sepulchral : a young woman is sitting comfortably Fig. 91 
on a chair, with a duckling on her hand which her naked child tries to 
touch ; can we say that she is preparing for the visit to the tomb like the 
girlin front of her? But we find such scenes ftom ordinary life in tomb- 
teliefs as well as on lekythoi, and we find them on the lekythoi as reliefs 
or statuaty groups as well as detached from the monument and living a 
life of their own. What appears on the surface to be a mixture of types 
was a unity to the Greeks and is a unity to us; the pervading tone fuses 
the figures into a single picture. How can we take pitures literally, when Fig. 88 
one of them is Hypnos and Thanatos laying the dead in the grave, a poetic 
image which (unlike Charon or the little fluttering souls) had no reality 
in any religious belief ? 

The red-figure painting of the Periclean period cannot compare with 
the wonderful quality of the white lekythoi. True, it displays the ideal 
Style, founded on truth to nature, of the Parthenon sculptures, and their 
free and noble humanity, with the complete harmony of those elements, 
truth and beauty, which were often separate in the early classical style ; 
it participates in the general emancipation from those last restrictions to 
which anything that was harsh and uneven in the early classical style was 
due ; and it perfects the beauty of the motives and the flow of the lines. 
There is much beauty and much that is noble, and some of its products 
ate magnificent: but its keynote as a whole is its acquiescence in its 


K Le 


PERICLEAN VASE-PAINTING 


position as a handicraft (although a handicraft on a very high level) 
compared with the monumental art of its time, in the footsteps of which 
it is unable to follow as archaic vase-painting did, and unwilling to follow 
as eatly classical painting did in its upper tanks. The influence of monu- 
Figs. 93- mental painting is nevertheless quite noticeable still, and in our two next 
100 pictures, which date from the middle of the fifth century, the invention 
is worthy of a very great master. Hardly any vase-pictute gives us so 
strong a sensation of the lyrical art of Polygnotos as the Orpheus among 
Fig. 100 the Thracians. The draughtsmanship of the vase-painter is nothing out 
of the common, but it is Periclean: attitudes and line ate perfeétly free, 
the bodies are rounded, and the execution has that lightness or even 
hastiness which indicates the refusal to compete with monumental art. 
But through the veil of this draughtsmanship we see musical appreciation 
expressed in all its stages, culminating in the transference of the emotion 
from the song to the singer himself: the gaze of oneof the young Thracians 
has found its billet in the singer and fastens and feeds on his face. There 
ate many other finely balanced compositions of standing figures about 
a seated one, so that we cannot be certain that the original was a panel 
picture or a relief: a group like this is quite conceivable as portion of 
a mural picture with many figures. How far the dependence goes in 
details one cannot say. | 
We have undoubtedly only a brief extra& from a large painting in 
the picture of the Slaying of the Suitors which is divided between the two 
Figs. 98-99 sides of a bowl. ‘The seleétion and the distribution show both decorative — 
skill and a fine understanding for the most effective features of a masterly 
original, The natural distance between Odysseus and his victims re- 
conciles us to the dismemberment of even such an agitated scene, and 
the handle-palmettes between the two sides create that nice equilibrium 
of tepresentation and ornament which heightens the appeal of many 
excellent vase-pi€tures. It was long believed that we had here a remini- 
scence of a wall-painting by Polygnotos in the Temple of Athena at Plataea. 
But the text of our account shows that there as elsewhere Polygnotos 
depicted not the fight itself, but the atmosphere after the fight. The art 
of our master is not the less for that. Even in the vase-painter’s curt 
extract we can recognise the ethical depth of the expression with its different 
shades, and thus appreciate the artist as a creator independent of the 
poetical tradition: for to make the maids, as against the Odyssey, into 
dumbstruck speétators of the slaughter, was an effect for the eye and not 
for the ear. Nor is such a scene conceivable on the Greek Stage; on 
the stage it could only be related, not enaéted. Only a painter could 


74 


PERICLEAN VASE-PAINTING 


mitror the terror of the unequal combat in the rigid horror and rent 
sensations of the watching maids, and increase the terror by the contrast. 
The maids must also have served to balance the group of Odysseus and 
his helpers against the mob of suitors. In the vase-picture we can also 
feel the contrast between their rooted stances and the supple tiger grace 
of the merciless archer and the flinching and bobbing of the defenceless 
suitors. 

It is significant of the spirit of the Periclean age that we feel it even 
Stronger in the simplest and most unpretentious vase-pictures than in 
the most elaborate. We have already compared the Heétor’s leavetaking (Fig. 38) 
of Euthymides with a similar subject treated by an artist of this period. 

In Euthymides a true archaic combination of moving earnestness and Fig. 102 
ardour with the simple pride of the artist; here the modesty of the craftsman 
who merely suggests, with a light hand, what was expressed in monu- 
mental art, as he was well aware, in a hardly less simple but incomparably 
Stronger and more complex way. In spite of this, or just because of it, 
he shows himself not unworthy of the great age: he fills his humble 
place faithfully. In form and feeling his pi€ture is a refleGtion of the art 
of the Parthenon frieze, and it is as simply decorative as the mantle- 
figures on the back of the vase. He repeated the piture, once, twice, and 
no doubt often, in this also a craftsman without higher ambition: for 
there can be no question here of a desire for self-improvement. Thus 
the reproach of academic flies over his head, while high praise is due less 
to him than to the monumental art which he but follows. He has achieved 
his object, that decorative monumentality which begins to develop in the 
late archaic period and now reaches its acme. The Periclean age alone 
could fill that decorative monumentality with noble humanity and ideal 
beauty. 

The power of the lyrical art of the Periclean age, which, like Orpheus, 
subdues evety wild thing, is also seen in the Periclean treatment of 
Dionysiac subje@s. Our reproductions cover the whole period from Figs. r01, 
the middle of the century to about 430. If we look through the numerous *°3"1° 
representations of a certain Attic cult of Dionysos, the adagio of the 
Periclean age is unmistakable : we find nothing to compare with Makron’s (Fig. 58) 
magnificent swarm of maenads or with the delirious procession and dance 
on a famous vase of the florid style in Naples. Not till then, in the time 
of the great war, does the flame kindled in the Parthenon pediments blaze 
up again, even if, at this late period, the rhythm of beauty has no longer 
the unimpaired strength of expression which it has in Brygos or Makron. (Figs. 57- 
The putely lyric pictures of women engaged in the Attic cult of Dionysos 58) 


75 


PERICLEAN VASE-PAINTING 


Fig. 103 often rise to real magnificence. Attitude and movement, rich yet still 


Fig. 101 


simple drapery, and the solemn tone of the whole, all contribute equally 
to the impression of a lofty grandeur which is nevertheless full of deep- 
seated life. This is the very height of the classical red-figure style, and 
here as in the white lekythoi we hardly ask ourselves about the monumental 
att which the work reflects, but give ourselves up entirely to the effe& 
of the work itself. In our picture one of the women is holding an infant 
boy who stretches out his arms to another woman : the boy looks almost 
like a little satyr, but it is probably Dionysos himself—possibly, indeed, 
represented by a mortal child: we cannot be certain, for the Dionysiac 
element had struck such deep roots in art and imagination that the bound- 
aries ate easily effaced: the reality of faith becomes the reality of art; 
even satyts wait upon fair maids and women at the festival, as well- 
behaved as the little Loves. 

Our picture probably represents a custom at the festival of flowers. 
In spring, when nature wakens, Dionysos rushes abroad with his rout, 
and with the flowers the souls of the dead rise also from the depths of 
the earth, and many rites are required to appease them and to purify 
and cleanse the living. One of these rites was swinging: the draught 
purified. So here we have a satyr, servant of the great lord of all life, 
swinging a young girl who holds on tight and points her toes pertly 
into the air. The words which accompanied the a@ion we learn from the 
inscription: ‘eia, o eia.’ In his first sketch the artist had drawn the 
satyt still pushing, then he altered him and made him standing back to 
catch. This quiet attitude enhances the effec of the swinging, and suits — 
the satyr’s festal gravity and propriety. Still more festal in his attire, 
but a trifle comic with his bent knees like some clumsy slave, is the 
other satyr on the reverse of the bowl, holding a sunshade over a lady 
who looks gravely in front of her. It is probably a ptocession: in 
the Panathenaic procession the metic women held sunshades over the 
citizen’s wives. The vase is compatatively eatly, and the satyr seems 
to feel his old nature still jigging in his limbs: this nature breaks out 
later in a more or less ennobled form, but at first the new ethos took hold 
of the satyr, the unruly wood spirit, together with the rest of the god’s 
retinue. Times are changed: he can now be trusted with a fair maid. 
At worst the satyrs behave like rough peasant-lads, even when they 
sutprise a naked nymph asleep. We figure the finest version of that 


Fig. 104 subject: form and movement are perfeétly free, and the rounding of 


the figures has a distin@ spatial effe&: but the drawing has a restraint 
and tenseness which gives the nymph’s body the look of a fresh fruit. 


76 


PERICLEAN VASE-PAINTING 


There are only faint traces visible of the rendering of the soil, and the 
tendering is much the same as in our next picture. 

This belongs to the end of the Periclean period, and is a late work Fig. 105 

of the master to whom, after Sotades, we owe the most charming of the (Fig. 82) 
small pictures of female life. Dionysos is resting, and his swarm has 
almost come to rest. The figures, leaning, sitting, lying at their ease, 
ate atranged on the picture-surface with a certain suggestion of space. 
A nymph, wearied with romping, sinking into the arms of a seated 
friend, relaxes her limbs completely: and the last ecstatic dancer is not 
far from complete relaxation. A soft swinging rhythm flows through all 
the figures. In this we feel the influence of late Pheidian art, of the 
Parthenon pediments, and the same influence is visible in the drapery with 
its animated play of folds. Other works of this painter are mote severe : 
together they are the masterpieces of the Periclean style in this sphere : 
pure beauty and perfect charis; conception and form large, for all the 
small scale ; and the charming vegetative life of Greek girls and women 
rendered truly, simply and on large lines. 

The artistic ta& of the period shows itself in the moderation of its 
attitude towards minuteness in drawing, just as clearly as in its refusal to 
compete with monumental art, for the small piGures, and often the middle- 
sized ones, are not sketched with a few touches, but drawn with great 
cate, at any rate when the artists are taking their work in earnest. But 
they knew the limitation of the red-figure technique, and knew that the 
relief-line becomes dead if handled as Sotades handled his flowing, (Fig, 32) 
pictorial brush-lines, and that if the line was to remain lively and expressive 
the classical style made different demands from those of the archaic style. 

This is nowhere so clear as in the drapery and especially in the chiton, 
which determines the graphic character of so many pictures of female 
life. In vase-painting of the late fifth century the fine rippling of the 
chiton has stiffened into a kind of ornament, and the soft folds of the 
woollen material degenerate into painful flourishes. Not so in the 
Periclean age: the lines move lightly and freely: when working on a 
small scale the artist does not shrink from simplifying, the only way to 
avoid pettiness ; and he is always ready to use such old and tried devices 
of red-figure painting as the transparency of the garment over the out- 
lines of the body and the surface-lines, for instance, on the female breast. 
In the later painters of the group of Meidias strength has given place to (Fig. 109) 
ovet-refinement, the accomplished technique has become an end in itself, 
and schematises the style of the time into ornamental affeCtation. Com- 
pate with that the Periclean style of drapery as we see it in our picture : 


77 


THE FLORID STYLE IN VASE-PAINTING 


neither archaic Sstylisation nor post-classical affectation, but complete 
freedom never abused, the same flow and pause of the material as in the 
Parthenon, natural, sweet-lined and monumental. 

If we look at the later works of our master rather more closely than 
is possible here, we shall find certain traces of ovet-ripeness even in them : 
ever so little pose, and a touch of ostentation in the beautiful rhythms. 
It was the fate of Attic art as a whole that immediately after its greatest 
triumph, the pediments of the Parthenon, the form began to lose its 
inner life, the means became an end, and artificial feats took the place 
of artistic creation: in a word, manner instead of style. This is the 
florid style of monumental art in the later fifth century: it still contains 
so much beauty and life that we have to compare it with the Parthenon, 
with those natural beings whose nature belongs to the Platonic world 
of ideas, before we recognise the touches of mannerism. In archite@ure 
the chief example of the florid style stands beside the Parthenon—the 
Erechtheum : all the charm of its complex articulation and its manifold 
ornament does not equal the plain grandeur of the Periclean buildings. 

(Figs. 106- The prospe&ts which the new art offered to vase-painting were clearly 
109) not those which Periclean art had held out : the florid Style did not counsel 
discretion, it invited imitation. Once more, as in the archaic petiod, 
there was a profusion of easily grasped formal elements with a strong 
thythmical movement and a highly decorative effe&t, once more formulae 
took the place of a large and simple conception of nature; the garments 
might be adorned with rich ornaments, the folds might be stylised into 
a kind of pattern and fantastically curled, and glaring contrasts were 
considered an excellent means of producing effe&. And there was no 
longer the same confli@ as in early classical times : monumental painting 
had made such progress in light, colour and the rendering of space that 
the vase-painters could not dream of competing with it in that field. , 
For their composition they used at most a scheme based on the Polygnotan | 
but mote or less stereotyped into a decorative pseudo-spatial expedient 
for filling the piéure-surface. In drawing, the progress made in their 
time helped them rather than hindered them: the devices of plastic 
rounding and even strong foreshortening were now the common property 
of all the better draughtsmen. The lines flowed supply, and supply the 
figures bent and turned; contours, inner details, folds moved in liquid 
cutves ; the technique received a new impetus, and in the thinness of its 
relief-lines it almost outdid the archaic style at its height. But what in 
the archaic period had been pute style, and even in the mannerism of 
(Fig. 50) Peithinos and his companions had been only an exaggeration of the current 


78 


THE FLORID STYLE IN VASE-PAINTING 


Style and current sense of form, was now, after the ideal style of the Peri- 
clean age with its close approximation to nature, something quite different. 
We are painfully aware of the substitution of the calligraphic formula 
for the fine form, of the flourish for the living curve, of routine for art. 
These competent vulgarians had lost not only the Periclean sense of nature, 
but the Periclean sense of measure; a miniature-like treatment of form 
found its way into work on a large scale, thanks to a mistaken desire for 
increased refinement, whereas the immediate predecessors of these artists 
had imparted grandeur to work on a small scale: sweet, pretty, softly 
tounded forms drove out simple beauty, elegant movement strong 
movement, pose rhythm and dignity, sentimental effeminacy that 
noble modesty with which the Idolino and the youths on the frieze of 
the Parthenon inclined their heads. 

Pronounced as all this is, and only too widespread, it nevertheless 
represents only the worst side of the florid style. It has a better side, 
and many painters reached an artistic level where they were not too Fig. 108 
Strongly affected by the vices of the age. They approached as near 
monumental art as their technique permitted, and rejected the self- 
satisfied methods of the vulgar. But these are exceptions and survivals, 
and their best always points back to the late Pheidian style, which dominates 
the succeeding period, and no doubt found a continuation in the works 
of monumental painting. An echo of these works is transmitted to us, 
though but imperfe@ly, by the best pictures on vases and by certain 
Pompeian paintings. Superficially these may be closer to the originals Fig. 118 
than the simple vase-pictures of the Periclean age to theirs: but in spirit 
and essentials the Periclean vases ate doubtless the truer reflection of 
the great art of their time. And if even there the white lekythoi are 
superior to the red-figure vases, this is even truer of the florid period, 
though in a different sense: the lekythoi followed the general trend of Fig. 97 
the new age with its softer rhythms, but they kept free from mannerism 
and ovet-ornamentation, and expression and feeling retained their old 
purity. The show-plant of the florid style did not thrive in the 
cemetery. 

The piatures of children on the little jugs used by the children Fig. 106 
themselves at the spring festival were also unaffected by the new Style. 
Unassuming though these little pictures are, there is something new 
and promising in them. ‘The shape and ways of little children are at 
last rendered with approximate accuracy. The origin of the novelty 
may be inferred from the accounts of pictures of boys by the great painters 
Parrhasios and Zeuxis. A principle is thus established of which we 


79 


Fig. 108 


THE FLORID STYLE: THE PELOPS VASE me 


seem to find traces somewhat earlier in white lekythoi: the naive 


tendering of the child as a tiny youth, a survival from the archaic period, : 
was now festricted to a later time of life, and the awakening of the feeling ig . 
for the charm of early childhood was the first step towards the putti of of 


the Hellenistic age. It is significant of classical feeling that the Greeks 
long hesitated to take the step. Even Aristotle describes children as 
ugly dwarves, and implies that really only man is beautiful, not woman : 
for her body lacks the distin@ articulation and the bigness, without 
which a body cannot be beautiful, can only be charming—that is, some- 
thing like ‘ pretty? in our sense. The philosopher is more conservative 
than the art of his time, but he well represents the classical ideal of 
bigness and of the rhythm which reveals the stru@ute; the ideal which 
received its purest embodiment in the Doric temple and the Doryphoros 
of Polykletos. From this point of view, which is that of Greek att in 
its very essence from the geomettic style onwards, women could not 
but seem lacking in clearness and children ill-proportioned. In this 
matter also the Periclean age represents not only a climax but a termina- 
tion. There was much artistic and human development after it, but no 
succeeding age was at once so artistic, so human, so Greek. 

One of the most important pi€tures of the florid Style, and one in which 
something of the fire of late Pheidian att still glows, represents Pelops 
carrying off Hippodameia, with the divine steeds tearing across the sea. 
Two itreconcilable things are in great measure reconciled. At first sight 
and at a certain distance all one sees is the chariot tushing along with the 
cat slightly oblique and the horses spread out in the usual way: the 
base-line is kept, and emphasised by the parallelisms of the old con- 
vention for galloping. ‘Two trees, a pair of doves, a dolphin, seem to 
be mete surface-filling, and a few lines indicating soil and water do not 
destroy the effeét of flatness. It is only when we look closer that this 
flat picture becomes a space-picture of astonishing power. ‘The slight 
indications of the landscape force the imagination into a definite path. 
The chariot rushes between two trees, past a rocky eminence on the 
shore, out on to the glittering sea: the fire-breathing coursers of Poseidon 
snort as they set foot on their native element: the hair and cloak of 
Pelops stream back with the rush; leaning well back he keeps control 
of the horses, and safe at last looks round towards the impotent pursuer. 
In the midst of this storm of movement Hippodameia towers above 
the front of the car in queenly calm, only raising her hand in wonder 
at the miracle of the chariot riding the sea. The motive of her uptight 


figute is repeated by the trees, and these quiet verticals heighten the 
80 


THE FLORID STYLE: AISON 


effect of the forward urging and back-surging diagonals and horizontals. 
These ate all signs of a truly great master: the only trace of lateness is 
the over-rich adornment and the ovet-fine execution of the details. The 
garment of Pelops with the theatrical splendour of its patterns and the 
now popular girdle-wreath, the flow of the chiton, too subtle for the 
scale of the picture, the laurel-wreath with its white berries in Pelops’ 
hair, which is trim and elegant in spite of the wind, and above all the 
niggling prettiness of his features—all this shows that the age of simple 
grandeut is past. 

The same symptoms appear in the Theseus cup painted by Aison. Fig. 107 
In his tondo he follows a simple and beautiful composition of Periclean 
date, but he has enriched it, polished it, and spoilt it. A good 
example of his tactlessness is his treatment of the maeander which 
decorated and symbolised the labyrinth in the older pictures. He has 
made it so small that it merges into the maeander of the frame and ceases 
to tell as a wall; especially as the entablature does not now touch it, 
and we have steps behind it instead. The three steps are primitively 
rendered in false perspective ; they ought to be below the columns and 
the wall. The painter could not bring himself to omit them—another 
contact between the florid style and the archaic. Behind Theseus is 
a porch recalling the Erechtheum, two columns with pediment and 
acrotetion. ‘Theseus stands out well from the porch and from Athena 
in space, and the drawing of his figure is highly plastic, with the chest 
atching forward in three-quarter view, its spatial effect enhanced by the 
half-concealment of the right arm. Less here would have been mote, 
as we see from the classical simplicity of the earlier cups. It is the same 
throughout. Aison wished the attitude of Theseus to be a rhythmical 
exptession of effort. He has succeeded in a measure, but the heroic 
pose is over-elegant, and the strong movement of the contours, which 
run all in waves—in big waves where small waves are impossible—is 
out of keeping with the slender forms, and gives them an air of feeble- 
ness. We get the same impression from Theseus’ little head, with its 
lovely tangle of curls and its receding chin; and from the drapery of 
Athena, which is too elaborate for the small scale of the picture. And 
then the Minotaur! Although he is being dragged along the ground, 
his arms ate extended in an attitude of indolent elegance which makes 
one think of a dandy in an armchair. There is excess everywhere, too 
much elegance, too much euphony of line and motive, too much display 
of beauty. One recalls the saying of the painter and sculptor Euphranor 
about the Theseus of Parrhasios, that he seemed to have been fed on 


L 81 


THE FLORID STYLE: MEIDIAS 


roses. Aison has abused his technical ability. He could not subordinate 
it to an artistic or a decorative purpose ; he belonged to a generation of 
smaller men. 
After the general observations already made, it will not be necessary 
to go very deeply into the picture which bears the signature of Meidias. 
Fig. 109 It decorates the curved surface of a hydria, and below it there is a frieze 
which we have not reproduced. The subjeét is the rape of the daughters 
of Leukippos by the Dioscuri. The scene takes place in a sanétuary 
of Aphrodite. The goddess is seated at her altar: to one side is Zeus, : 
father of the Dioscuri. The maidens were gathering flowers with their an 
playmates when they were surprised. In the background, squeezed in a 4 


between the chariots, not very happily, is the old-fashioned idol of 2 
Aphrodite, gilt and with white flesh, like a chryselephantine statue. This eo 
is not the only point in which the composition is unsuccessful: in the i 

i 


distribution of the masses a free equilibrium is aimed at but not attained : 
the picture looks lopsided and sits unevenly on the vase. The strength 
of the painter lay more in individual figures and groups. He seems to 
be quite incapable of giving a unified and satisfactory rendering of an 
incident full of movement. The Rape of the Leucippids produces the >a 
impression of an unsuccessful attempt to introduce violent movement | 
into a picture of a mere state. One might almost say that the only 
movement which was quite in Meidias’ manner was the floating of light 
drapery in the wind: it is evidently the zephyr which even in motionless 
figures lifts the delicate material under the armpits and at the ankles. 

The master’s conception of form is betrayed by the lines for plants 
and soil which he engraves in the black, while it is still moist, with a 
blunt tool: it finds its purest expression in lovely crinkling flourishes, 
just as a tasteless man will betray himself by the fantasias of his signature. 
Finally, a certain sentimentality, regular in the quiet pitures, finds its 
way even into the wrestling-group in the Rape of the Leucippids. The 
worst feature of all is the exaggerated inclination of the head; the 
sweetness of it affects the nerves of the stomach, and makes the Eirene 
of Kephisodotos and the statues of Praxiteles seem almost austere, because 
there the inclination is motived and is used with taé&. What a gulf 

(Fig. 108) between the quiet majesty of Hippodameia on the Pelops vase and the 
soft affectation of Helera in the chariot of Polydeukes on the Meidias 
vase! In the Pelops vase the racehorses tear past like the wind: in 
Meidias they seem rather to be curvetting, and the wind plays only 
in the garments and round the breast of the bride. Yet that the two 
works ate about contemporary, the costume, with its girdle-wreaths 


82 


bl vente a 
Se OY oe 


bee 
Rad 


4 PE 8 aul, ; 
wr ages ee ee ae, 


FOURTH-CENTURY VASE-PAINTING 


and chequered headgear, suffices to show. But the painter of the Pelops 
vase had still a sense of grandeur and expressiveness, even although 
certain details are petty ; in Meidias, on the other hand, there is nothing 
but graceful self-conscious trifling, delicious liquefaction, and empty pose. 


Our last vase-pifture comes from a different world; it exhibits the Fig. r10 


Style of the fourth century fully developed. The early stages of this 
Style cannot be studied in vase-painting. The vase-painters travelled for 
yeats in the beaten path of the florid style, and it was not until almost 
the middle of the century that the new style, which had meanwhile been 
perfected in monumental art, was taken over ready-made: a last, vain 
attempt to adjust the red-figure style to the completely altered conditions 
of a new age. The close adherence of the new style to monumental 
att makes us think of the origin of the red-figure style, which was due 
to the desire for freer and more expressive drawing than was possible 
with the highly decorative black-figure style: but the new Style is less 
decorative than any previous one. The style of the fourth century 
presents a deliberate contrast to the affeCtation of the end of the fifth 
centuty. The old line, decoratively effeGtive, and often stereotyped into 
a kind of calligraphy, gives way to observation of nature, leading to a 
noteworthy transvaluation of the line. Strongly rhythmical and sweet- 
lined as the art of the time, especially Praxitelean art, still was, the general 
movement of the planes and even more the style of the drapery with 
its allowance for light and shadow and its multitude of short interrupted 
lines were no less incompatible with the technical conditions of the 
red-figure style than the pictorial vision of the period, accustomed to a 
considerable measure of spatial depth, with the demand for a decorative 
treatment of the surface. The flattening out of the forms on the picture- 
surface had hitherto given the contour an extraordinary expressiveness : 
in the new figures, conceived plastically and often with their heads 
more or less frontal, the contour forfeited much of its expressiveness 
and significance: the clearness of the figures at a distance suffered 
accordingly, and the entire picture lost in decorative value. It is no 
wonder, in these citcumstances, that the story of the Attic red-figure 
Style of the fourth century was that of a short ascent and a long decline. 
It would have needed a totally new decorative stylisation, in great measure 
independent of monumental art, to keep the old technique alive. But 
that would have been a contradiétion to the whole past history of the 
red-figure style, and the requisites for such a development did not exist. 
Thus the Attic red-figure style died a natural death at the very moment 
when monumental painting reached its prime. 


83 


FOURTH-CENTURY VASE-PAINTING 


Our picture represents the fateful consultation between Zeus and 
Themis about the Trojan war. Themis is seated on the earth-navel, 
the omphalos stone, which is decorated with knotted fillets. Opposite 
her is Athena, with a little Nike floating towards her holding a spray 
of laurel; behind her is Hermes ; to the left sits Aphrodite with her hand- 
maid Peitho; on the right rides the moon-goddess Selene, escorted by 
Hespetos, the evening star. From Pheidian art onwards, the sun-god in 
his chariot usually balances Selene at the other side of the piGture, so 
that out vase-painting is perhaps a free extra& from a large pi@ure of 
the Council of the Gods. The drawing, with its tenuous relief-lines, 
lightly indicates the shapes, with an airy, unerring mastery of form even 
in strong foreshortenings. A kind of pictorial effe& has been extraéted 
from that most linear of all mediums, the relief-line: we are conscious 
that Greek art has entered the period of pi€torial vision. On the other 
hand, the use of colour and gold in the central group, judging by pi€tures 
in better preservation, was decorative rather than piGtorial: the chief 
colour is white, then light blue and purple, and a little red, yellow, gold. 
The use of the white in the female flesh is just as flat as in the black- 
figure Style. This contrast of piforial, spatial line-drawing and flat 
decorative colouring shows us the red-figure style in an intolerable state 
of internal tension: the strained bowstring must break, 

After the vase-pictures we add one or two examples of drawing on 
bronze and ivory. We have vast numbers of Etruscan and Latin engray- 
ings on bronze, chiefly on mirrors and small cylindrical boxes; but 

Figs. 111- vety few Greek. Our pictures come from the insides of slightly convex 
112 cases, decorated outside with embossed reliefs: these cases served as 
the lids of metal mirrors which they kept polished. The idea of decora- 
ting folding-mirrors with rich figurework seems to have been Corinthian. 
The figures and their accessories were usually silvered, the background 
Fig. 111 occasionally gilt. The better preserved of the two pi€tures belongs to 
the turn of the fifth and fourth centuries. It shows us Aphrodite, or 
pethaps her handmaid Peitho, playing dibs with the goat-god Pan. The 
ill-assorted couple seem to have quarrelled. The goddess has half 
turned away, as if threatening not to play any more, but her pointing 
hand is evidently claiming the stones. Pan is talking to her most earnestly, 
and we cannot resist the suspicion that justice and logic are on his side. 
But they will hardly help him, for the little Eros zealously supports the 
claim of the goddess. The two gods, who are often shown wrestling in 
later art, ate here engaged in intellectual contest. The goddess’ other bird, 

the goose, takes no part ; and that makes the dispute seem all the livelier. 


84 


DRAWINGS ON BRONZE AND IVORY 


In form and in spirit the goddess is the later counterpart of the 
Athena in one of the metopes of the Temple of Zeus at Olympia. Athena 
there sits on a rock in much the same position, behaving a little like 
an artless peasant-girl. Herakles holds out the slain Stymphalian birds : 
she turns round and moves her hand towards them timidly ; she is curious, 
but the dead things are rather uncanny. A touch of archaic naiveness 
lingers in this early classical humanisation of the goddess. Then came 
the majestic deities of the high classical style. Our pi&ture comes after 
these, and at the beginning of the way which led to the conscious 
humanisation of the gods in the fourth century, culminating in the 
youthful deities of Praxiteles. The young girl with the full forms, an 
effective contrast to the sinewy goat-god, may remind us of the famous 
hetairai of Corinth, the young handmaidens of Aphrodite, whom Pindar 
addresses with such wonderful human sympathy. So may the other 
picture, which shows two very young, strong girls dancing in diaphanous Fig. 112 
drapery. Nature pure and simple: the easy flow and wave of the 
material has nothing calligraphic about it, and is brimful of the rhythm 
of the dance. It is surprising how closely the easy lines of the graver 
reproduce the effect of piftures in spite of the naturally unpictorial 
technique : Pompeian pitures furnish a standard of comparison. (Fig. 118) 

We close this part of our study with a glance at certain precious Figs, 113- 
fragments belonging to a class of which few specimens remain: drawings ''4 
on ivoty. They come from a wooden coffin which was veneered with 
thin plaques of ivory, and ate the most important femains of a substantial 
find of wooden sarcophagi from tumuli in South Russia. As early as 
the first centuries of the first millennium Greek civilisation set foot in 
what was the ancient Scythian land north of the Black Sea: Ionian 
colonists laid the foundations of a provincial culture which soon passed 
beyond the bounds of Greek nationality and which was carried far over 
Europe, long after, by the great Migrations. By that time, it is true, 
the Oriental spirit had long gained the upper hand: but in the classical 
period not only the Greek colonists, but the wealthy native princes, 
surrounded themselves with the noblest produéts of Greek art. 

Our illustrations give only a seleGtion from representations of the 
Judgment of Paris and the Rape of the Leucippids. The delicately 
engraved drawing was otiginally coloured: the line, unhampered by 
technical restriGtions, is exceedingly fine and light. The style is still in 
the main that of the late fifth century, though there are already signs of 
a new development. The pictures are among our most. important 
examples of the florid style, and like the best vase-piftures of the time 


85 


THEBAN TOMBSTONE 


they still show vestiges of the grandeur of the Patthenon. We feel this 
more directly in the splendid chariot than in the figures of Athena, 
Aphrodite and Eros. The Hera of the Judgment of Paris—not repro- 
duced here—also shows the conneétion with late Pheidian art, in which 
we find both the veil-like delicacy of transparent material, and, even in 
single Statues, garments rustling in the wind. Granting all this, one must — 
nevertheless recognise that the work is only very exquisite handicraft, 
not great art. In spite or perhaps because of its extraordinary skill, 
there is something slightly academic in the drawing, especially in the 
faces. But there is feeling in most of it, and the slight affectation of 
Aphrodite’s swimming gait becomes her tolerably well. 
A modest fifth-century original forms a transition to the monumental 
Fig. 115 painting of classical style: the picture of a warrior on a Boeotian gtave- 
Stone. Its special claim is its large scale: but it cannot be called a 
painting: all we see to-day is the drawing—most probably only the 
pteliminary drawing for encaustic. 

The trapezoidal slab of grey limestone is in good preservation, but it 
is only inch by inch, and close up, that the eye can follow the little dots 
which make up the drawing; in the cast to which our reprodudtion 
goes back the lines are drawn over and the roughened background 
coloured in. In the well-preserved tomb-paintings from the neigh- 
bouring Thessaly the preliminary drawing under the colours is vety 
detailed : we may therefore infer that our pi@ure is a preliminary drawing ; 
there are other proofs, but we shall mention only the most Striking : the 
nipple is drawn over the speart-shaft. The tombstone preserves the 
memory of the dead in the simplest way: it gives his name, Mnason, 
in fine monumental lettering, and his pi@ure in the fulness of his manhood, 
pethaps with a slight hint of individuality in the delicate line of the 
tidge of the nose. The shape and movement of the figure as a whole, 
and the animated flow of the folds, are rendered with great sureness of 
line and power of expression. It is the finished and confident beauty 
and the broad simplicity of ripe Periclean Style: the picture may there- 
fore be dated about 430. In its simple distin@ion it stands far above 
two other stelai of the same class, which bear all the marks of the 
florid style. 

At the turn of the fifth and fourth centuries Greek classical Style 
took final possession of Etruscan att. The peculiar wall-painting of its 

(Fig. 68) tombs was described and illustrated at the end of our discussion of 
archaic art. In the classical style it lags still farther behind Greek painting, 
Fig. 116 and the earliest pi€tures, in which the Style is purest, are not paintings 


86 


ASTRAGALOS-PLAYERS 


at all as Zeuxis or Parrhasios understood painting, but still mere coloured 
drawings as in archaic art and in Attic white lekythoi. Our illustration (Figs. 85- 
gives an extract from the banqueting scenes, unfortunately severely 87) 
damaged, in the first chamber of the so-called Tomba dell’ Orco at 
Corneto, the ancient Tarquinii. The noble female head stands out from 
a background of two colours: the dark hair with its garland from the 
light stucco of the wall; face and neck, hair-band and dress, from the 
cloudy darkness of the nether world, which plays loosely and decora- 
tively round the outlines of the figures. This flat linear treatment is 
better suited to the conditions of the subterranean tomb-chambers than 
the pictorial execution which gradually makes its way into the several 
figures, though never into the picture as a whole. Even from the purely 
attistic point of view such wall-decoration is not to be measured by the 
Standards of Greek monumental art. It was sufficient for the painter’s 
purpose to give a general impression of classical beauty and classical 
atmosphere: his drawing did not stand close examination by daylight. 
The harmony of the forms is not perfeét, either in the outline of the 
skull or in the features of the face. The features lack also the living 
line which characterises the best lekythos pictures despite their small 
scale. The eyelid is too heavy, the nostril unsensitive, the upper lip 
pursed up too violently. We are far from the source. 

We have the same painful feeling of remoteness when we turn to a 
masterpiece of classical painting, the picture of the astragalos-players : Fig. 117 
for all we possess is a copy from the time of the birth of Christ. The 
Athenian Alexandros made the copy, presumably much reduced, on a 
matble slab found at Herculaneum. ‘The preservation makes it doubtful 
whether it was a real painting or only a coloured drawing; if a real 
painting, then what remains is merely the preliminary drawing and the 
underpainting, and all we possess is the composition and the drawing, 
and even the drawing will have been coarsened by the copyist. The 
worst feature is the alteration of the proportions to suit the late Hellenistic 
ideal with its high, narrow breast. What the line has lost we are conscious 
evetywhete, most strongly in the faces and hands: yet we can feel the 
proximity of the Parthenon pediment, and the original may therefore 
be placed in the thirties of the fifth century. The purest effect is given 
by the composition, which is carefully thought out both in form and 
in expression: it is only slightly impaired by the modern frame, which 
laps over too far on the left side. At the first glance we notice what in 
a vase-picture we should describe as defective space-filling: an empty 
spot in the right-hand top corner, and an empty strip, only partially 


87 


ASTRAGALOS-PLAYERS 


bridged, between the compact groups. These are both audacious devices 
to obtain certain effects. 

The two playmates Leto and Niobe have fallen out over a throw of 
the knucklebones. Leto stands half-averse in injured dignity, hardly 


opening her hand to the hand offered her by Niobe: a friend of both, 2 
the dainty Phoibe, is doing her best to effeét a reconciliation, but neither a 
patty is quite ready for that: Phoibe presses the shoulder of Niobe 7 


forward with her left hand, and her right, behind Niobe’s back, beckons 
to the hesitating Leto with an insistent southern gesture. A delightful 4 
evetyday scene, but heavy with presage for the Greek who read the 2 
names, and strangely impressive, from the queenliness of Leto, even to ee 2 
the uninformed. The effeé& is immensely increased by contrast with 
the two maidens immersed in their game and unconscious of what is 


taking place beside them. But this game, too, contains the seed of a 5 
similar quarrel: Aglaia follows the throw intently and grasps her last ‘ 
knucklebone tightly in her hand. We see the paintet’s art developing % 
from the high ethos of Polygnotos into the charming play with expres- e 


sion in Zeuxis. 

The picture is as full of form as of expression. ‘The. crouching 
figures conceal most of the lower part of the standing ones, whose ; 
attitudes are made clear, however, by one foot of each being shown. : j 
This gives us two compaé& groups, one of two and the other of three = 
figures, both built deep into the pi€ture. They are separated by an 
empty strip, which divides the masses in a happy proportion and possesses 
a double expression value: it stresses Leto’s self-isolation, shown also 
by her attitude ; and the bridging of the strip emphasises the wonderful 
play of the undulating hands. And here another contrast: below the 
groping hands of Niobe the right hand of Hileaira extended with the 
knucklebones, not reaching through the empty strip, but only into it, and 
displaying its beautiful lines against the quiet background. Lowest of 
all, the cause of the rift which runs through the pi@ure, the knuckle- 
bone between the feet of the divided friends. Lastly, the void in the 
tight-hand upper corner: in conjunétion with the foot and the slanting 
back-blown drapery of Phoibe, it indicates her eaget pressure forward, 
the same effect as in the magnificent Parthenon metope with one Lapith a 
pressing the centaur against the edge: a dynamic equilibrium of masses, 4 
with no attempt at such decorative space-filling as appears in the so- 
called Theseus metope. ‘This effect of pressure and avoidance leftward ee 
is assisted by all the slanting lines which run down from left to right, | 
without any corresponding counter-movement until we come to the 


88 


PENTHEUS 


lower left corner with the lower right leg of Aglaia and the folds of her 
cloak. The composition, then, is a mature masterpiece, which makes 
us tegtet bitterly all that we have lost: for neither relief—one thinks 
of Orpheus and Eurydice, where the hands are so eloquent—nor vase- 
painting has such complex means of expression at its disposal. 

The next pi€ture takes us into a new world. It represents the death Fig. 118 
of the Theban king Pentheus on the slopes of Kithairon at the hands 
of the raging votaries of Dionysos—a mythical symbol of the convulsion 
caused by the penetration of the ecstatic Thracian cult into Greece. 
Here at last we have painting in the full sense of the word: a complete 
pottion of the outer world in its natural appearance, conceived as a 
unity in space, light and colour, and shaped into a picture. It was 
explained in the introduction that the step which decided the future of 
European painting, the step to actual reprodudtion of seen appearance, 
was taken at Athens in the last third of the fifth century. We insisted 
that the predominance of the human form was not thereby shaken and 
that the spatial depth was at first limited. We found a trace of this 
new painting, adapted to the particular conditions of painting on vases, (Fig. 108) 
in the Pelops amphora: it corroborates the testimony of our literary 
documents. Other vase-pictures confirm the well-founded assumption 
that our Pompeian wall-painting preserves to us the main elements of a 
painting of this period. But our first step on the insecure ground of 
Romano-Campanian wall-painting involves us immediately in a tangle 
of questions which cannot be discussed here. A brief reference to these 
matters was made in the Introduction. The answer to the principal 
question will run, that these late wall-pictures of the century before and 
the century after the birth of Christ are in many respects produdts of their 
own times—above all in the substitution of decorative mural-painting 
for the nobler panel-painting—but not only contain, in general, the 
legacy of classical and Hellenistic painting, but, in particular, operate 
more ot less freely with old material. Adtual copies can seldom be 
pointed to with absolute confidence, but many famous old pictures are 
undoubtedly preserved to us in their main features. How far accuracy 
went in detail—the technical difference between wall-painting and panel- 
painting naturally set limits—remains more or less questionable: we 
must be content if we can recognise what may be more or less accurate, 
and what cannot. 

Our picture cannot reproduce the pictorial aspect of a late fifth- 
century or early fourth-century pifture. The varied play of light and 
shadow, the glow and shimmer of the colours, presuppose at least another 


M 89 


ANDROMEDA 


century of pictorial development: Apollodoros, Zeuxis and Parrhasios 
but laid the foundations of the fabric which is here complete. In the 
rendering of form, however, we do seem to catch a faint echo of the 
old style: but all we can trust is the general lines of the composition 
and of the rendering of space. We find once more the expedient which 
we found in the monumental painting of the early classical age—cutting a 
off a number of the figures behind portions of the landscape: here it 
is used in a spatial manner, and the figures are not spread out on a plane “4 
surface meant to indicate space, but on a slope which is represented in 
perspective. The clear composition, with its manifold divisions and 
connexions, tempts us to study it more closely. But in view of the 
great gulf between the late picture before our eyes and the old picture 
in our minds, it is better to abstain: a slight modification, and how 
much may have been changed! ‘The fire of genuine passion which 
must have burned in the original has become languid: one feels that 
the demons in the background are really needed, to fan the women 
into fury. We shall best do justice to the picture if we take its beauties ‘g 
without prejudice as we find them : for even although it is less important : 
as a work of art than as a historical document, it is not unworthy to 
stand at the entrance to a domain in which we shall encounter many 
great works of art. 

Fig.119 A pitture of Perseus and Andromeda puts us on the track of a 
classical masterpiece. The hero is helping the maiden down from the 
cliff on which she had been exposed to the sea-dragon: the slain monster 
is weltering in his blood. The wall-painting is based on a famous 
original, which was copied not only in other wall-paintings, but in a — , 
Statuary group and on coins. The plastic versions naturally confine a 
themselves to the main group, but the main group recurs almost un- ee 
changed in most of the reproduétions, so that its principal features may 
be counted certain. In the wall-piftures the main features of the land- 
scape elements are also the same, but the accessories vary considerably. 
This is pattly due to the special development of Italic painting. In 
the first century before Christ it has a free late Hellenistic character; then 
it shows the pronounced classicism which is one of the chief marks of 
Augustan culture; and finally, in the second half of the first century 
after Christ, a neo-Hellenistic movement, sparkling with piorial life, 
sets in. Old masterpieces were copied in all three styles: and each ~ ss 
style not only infused much of its own natute, of its artistic handwriting, : 
into the copy, but often made the freest use of the traditional matter, 
altered it, and transformed it. A great part was played throughout by 


go 


ANDROMEDA 


the decorative requirements of the mural architeGture. Thus the classi- 
cising style liked pi&ures with plenty of space and comparatively small 
figutes ; if it used older panel-pictures, it was apt to enlarge the com- 
position by the old expedient of subsidiary figures: hence the shore- 
nymphs or Nereids who watch the scene in the classicising examples 
of the Andromeda. 

The last of the three styles of wall-painting was the most remote 
from the classical works, and for that very reason it is easy to see if the 
artist has tried to copy accurately. So in our picture of Andromeda : 
it bears no trace of the perfectly free flow and gush of light and colour 
which are characteristic of the third style, our pi€ture of Achilles in Skyros (Fig. 123) 
being a good example. The forms, the colours, and above all the 
distribution of light and shade, are severe, simple and arranged in big 
contrasts : even the Pentheus, which goes back to a considerably older (Fig. 118) 
original, is much more complex and animated in this respe€t, more 
Hellenistic : it speaks the language of its own time. 

Our picture is most probably a copy after one of the masterpieces 
of Nikias, an Attic painter of the second half of the fourth century. 
The severity which the style retains even in the copy suggests that it was 
one of his earlier works. A modern eye will feel this severity especially 
Strongly in the statuesque attitudes of the figures—a sign of the pre- 
dominance of the human figure in Greek painting. That is also why 
the rocks look rather like side-scenes: we shall notice the same peculi- 
atity in the free landscapes of the Hellenistic-Roman period. The rock- 
gate is a great favourite: it has little dead mass about it, it has sharp 
divisions, and it provides a background which can easily be suited to 
the various requirements of the figures. Here it helps to contrast Perseus 
with Andromeda: she is light against the dark rock, he dark and 
impressive against sea and air. ‘The contours stand out clearly, and 
the head of Perseus has a light space round it to show it up, an expedient (Figs. 121, 
which we shall meet again in another form. Quintilian tells us some- 2? 13) 
thing that is very characteristic of Greek painting: he says that painters 
sought to prevent the shadow of one figure from falling on another, 
so as not to injure the clearness of the contours. Is it possible that the 
treatment of space, with the distant sea-horizon, belonged to the original 
pi@ure by Nikias? That is one of the great questions in the history 
of Greek painting. There are reasons for supposing that it did, but 
no convincing proof. ‘The finer details of the original must have mostly 
disappeared in the copy: we therefore say no more about them, 
but content ourselves with the general impression: a peculiar 


91 


Fig. 121 


ALEXANDER MOSAIC 


work, alien to us in many respects, and filled with a severe artistic 
rhythm. 

The mosaic of the Battle of Alexander, mentioned in the Introduétion, 
brings us closer to its original than any wall-picture. It adorned one 
of the fine old houses in Pompeii, the so-called House of the Faun, 
but hardly originated there. In any case it belongs to a good Hellenistic 
period, perhaps to the third century before Christ. It is a marvel of its 
kind: the size is monumental, some sixteen feet by eight; the stones 
are only two or three millimetres square: their number has been estimated 
at about a million and a half. The damage which the picture probably 
sustained in the first earthquake, before the destruction of the city, is 
not ruinous, but considerable : it was not made good at the time, although 
many other parts of the mosaic had been previously restored with larger 
Stones. Here and there, most obviously on the right end of the picture, 
the original mosaicist has not quite understood his model, which must 
have been injured. What he saw he copied accurately, and the gaps 
he filled up in the simplest way, thereby enabling us to make out much 
that was not clear to him. We have to mention this, but cannot go 
into it further: our monochrome reproduction makes that impossible, 
and we are only concerned here with the main points. 

The mosaic is most probably an accurate copy of one of the most 
famous pictures of antiquity, the ‘ Battle of Alexander and Darius,’ 
painted by the Attic master Philoxenos of Eretria, between the years 
319 and 297. Our authority Pliny mentions only one other work by 
the painter, a picture of three silens: so the great battle-piece was his 
ptincipal work. The terms of Pliny’s eulogy are as unusual and as 
definite as the description of the pi€ture: in this famous work the great 


crisis in the world’s history was focussed in the personal encounter of 


Alexander and Darius. The monumental tradition tallies so exactly 
with the literary that it is difficult to believe in a coincidence. Apart 
from the mosaic we have a whole series of monuments going back to 
the same original: works of all kinds, found in all parts of the Greek 
world, ranging from the fourth century to imperial times, from the 
satcophagi of Sidonian kings to South Italian vase-pi€tures, Etruscan 
urns, an Umbrian relief-bowl and a Roman sarcophagus. 

There ate no other representations of a battle of Alexander. The 
typology shows that a single painting of overwhelming effe& won 
instant popularity and became canonical: its painter had succeeded in 
his great enterprise of concentrating the tremendous historical event 
into a convincing artistic form. He did what Aristotle vainly advised 


92 


ALEXANDER MOSAIC 


Protogenes to do, what Apelles, from all we know of him, did no more 
than Protogenes: he rejeéted mythical allusion and rendered the reality 
in the higher sense of the inward truth ; but with the full creative power 
of the artistic imagination, not with the dry literalness of the Roman, 
incurably unimaginative for all his Hellenisation, The fame of this 
work immediately penetrated to Italy, and remained alive there for 
centuries. The reason must have been that it was not an ordinary battle of 
Alexander with the Persians, however excellently depicted, nor a hundred- 
figured fight like a pi€ure by Aristeides known to us from literature only, 
but just this particular conjunction of Alexander and Darius, unhistorical 
but in its innermost core world-historical, in a pi€tute of tragic grandeur. 

These facts, and the striking words of Pliny about Philoxenos, form 
two converging lines of argument. That they aCtually interse& will be 
admitted to be not only possible but probable. Now, the original of 
the mosaic was a four-colour pi€ture, and the teacher of Philoxenos was 
a four-colour painter: that greatly increases the probability, and it 
would become something like a certainty if the almost complete super- 
position of one figure upon another—some horses are reduced to an ear 
and a few hairs—could be taken as an example of Philoxenos’ ‘ abbrevi- 
ated’ method of painting. Unfortunately this is doubtful; but many 
will be inclined to believe that Philoxenos has achieved what neither 
Protogenes nor any of the other great painters of Hellas could achieve : 
he has linked his immortality with that of Alexander. A proof of the 
gteatness of the picture is that one may mistake its historical content 
completely, and yet understand its artistic quality even in the spiritual 
sense. Jacob Burckhardt says: ‘'The chief value of this picture, which 
is unique of its kind, does not lie in faultless draughtsmanship or 
expressiveness in detail, but in the overpowering rendering of an important 
moment with the slightest possible means. On the right side, the 
wheeling of the chariot and horses and a few suitable positions and 
gestures give a picture of helplessness and consternation which could not 
be plainer, or in essentials more complete. On the left side, so far as 
it is preserved, the irresistible advance of the victors is depicted with 
the utmost lucidity.’ Yet curiously enough he would not hear of 
Alexander and Darius, but took the pi€ture for a battle of Greeks or 
Romans with Celts, in spite of Goethe and Welcker. An ertor in 
Welcker’s interpretation of certain details seems to have repelled him. No 
dispute is possible. ‘The interpretation is made certain by the stiff tiara 
of Darius and the soft tiaras of his nobles, by the white band down 
the middle of his purple chiton, by the Persian standard, which Douris 


93 


ALEXANDER MOSAIC 


knew from Marathon, and by many other external signs, down to the 
trousers embroidered with fabulous animals and the skids on the chariot- 
wheels. Details are still open to dispute. The first thing is to make 
sure of the main features. 

The Persian host is beaten: for the King has taken to flight. Sur- 
rounded by a cavalry guard, his chariot, with the driver swinging his 
whip over it, plunges out of the middle distance obliquely towards the 
tight, threatening to run over three Persians who are lying on the 
ground. A swift thrust of the Macedonians, in the direction of the 
picture-plane, strikes the fugitives in the flank, half from behind: it is 
Alexander himself with a few riders, the last of whom looks round, 
for reinforcements seem needed urgently. They have already hurled 
their javelins, and the horse of a noble Persian, riding on the King’s 
tight, has been struck in the lung, and has come down on its knees. 
His master, richly clad and, like the King, without the corslet worn 
by most of the others, seems to be the most distinguished member of the 
escort; no sooner, therefore, was his horse hit than another Persian 
sprang from his and turned it round for the other to mount. But 
Alexander is too quick: the noble Persian has only half-dismounted 
and drawn his sword a few inches from the sheath when the long spear 
of the King pierces him through. It has all happened in a flash, and now 
only the dying man, who stops the spear, divides Alexander from Darius. 
A moment of the highest tension. 

The helpful Persian is hortor-stricken, and the Persians riding on 
the other side of the chariot raise their hands or grasp their heads in 
dismay. But Darius does not think of his own danger or take the 
Opportunity of sending an arrow at Alexander’s defenceless head and 
neck; full of anguish, he stretches out his hand to the noble comrade 
who is dying for him, who has been dear to him: thus even in defeat 
and flight he shows himself a king and earns our pity in his misfortune. 
Fear we hardly feel for him: we are conscious that the noble Persian 
does not die in vain, that he stops Alexander for the short time needed 
to get the chariot out of the tight corner. And Darius is not yet unpro- 
tected, the Persian resistance is not completely broken. Another Persian 
springs into the gap at the chariot side left by the fallen man, his sword 
drawn, glowering at Alexander, and on the other side of the chariot 
more Persians are riding up, a standard-bearer among them, and in the 
next moment will pass behind the chariot and hurl themselves on the 
Macedonians: one of them turns and beckons for further assistance 
with the usual southern gesture. 


94 


ALEXANDER MOSAIC 


Alexander himself is in danger. He has rushed forward too wildly, 
and followed too rashly the glance of his flaming eye. Although this 
patt of the pi@ure is much damaged, we can see that the noble Persian 
was not his first vidtim. Beneath his horse and behind it three or four 
watriots, hardly Macedonians, lay or were falling, and in front of 
Bucephalus a wounded Greek mercenary is still resisting gallantly : his 
weapon would menace Alexander, if he were not using it to party a 
Macedonian spear-thrust. And just here, where his course is checked, 
Alexander has lost his helmet—perhaps shot off or struck off. Nay, more: 
close behind his right arm are traces of a Persian’s head, recognisable 
by his moustache and perhaps a yellow tiara, remarkably near the horse’s 
hindquarters: it is no doubt the Persian who is said to have given 
Alexander a slight dageer-wound in the thigh at the Battle of the Issos. 
Thus even the wild victor is in serious danger; if we feel pity for the 
luckless Darius, we feel fear for the heroic youth who Stakes his life 
like a Homeric champion. Yet fear and pity are not only stirred, but 
purified by contemplation of the artistic form. Thrilled by the tragic 
nature of the event, by the grandeur of the courage and generosity, 
and not least by the art which has fused all these things into a unity, 
we tutn away, in the words of Goethe, ‘to yield ourselves to the most 
suitable reflexions in silence.’ 

So much for the picture as a whole: in the details much is disput- 
able, but one main point is certain—the spears, which for Macedonian 
Safissae ate too near to be unoccupied, belong to a fleeing band of 
Persians. ‘This is also the only interpretation which suits the high value 
which the speats possess as means of expression in the general com- 
position. Before we turn to the composition we must say a word about 
the question which particular fight the painter wished to represent. 
The only possibilities are Issos and Gaugamela, for Darius was not 
ptesent at the Granikos. Now, these two great battles were so quickly 
and so completely overgrown by legend, that a priori we cannot expect 
teal historical accuracy. The very kernel of the representation is 
unhistorical—the meeting of the kings, although legend reports it of 
both battles, like the story that Darius finally mounted a horse. In 
spite of this it can hardly be doubted that the painter meant the Battle 
of the Issos: for at the Issos we have a citcuméstantial account of how 
the nobles sacrificed their lives to defend the royal chariot. It is unneces- 
saty to go further into detail, and it would be unsuitable to the legendary 
charaéter of both tradition and piture. Two points seem to contradict 
each other—the presumed dagger-thrust of the Persian beside Alexander, 


95 


ALEXANDER MOSAIC 


which is told of Issos, and the inferred lengthening of the Persian spears, 
which is told of Gaugamela. Neither has much historical cogency, 
considering how freely Greek art dealt with minor details; especially 
as the loss of Alexandet’s helmet at a critical moment recalls the Granikos, 
where his helmet was split by a sword-stroke. The painter evidently 
wanted to show the king’s head clearly, and at the same time he gained 
an effective motive. And so with the mirror-like shield: the artist 
may have known it from Xenophon’s description of Cyrus, but that is 
no reason for supposing that it has fallen from Darius’ arm. Modern 
masters are often unable to answer such questions : in these minor matters 
they follow, for the most part, half-unconscious associations of ideas. 
Such an association may have suggested the riding-horse which is held 
in readiness. Obviously, to any unprejudiced beholder it is meant to 
replace the foundered horse of the noble Persian. Darius would be 
lost like him, if he tried to leave his chariot now and mount: indeed, 
his charioteer is whipping up the team to top speed. All the 
same, the suggestion may have come to the painter from the story of 
Darius’ riding-horse; but he has altered the motive, as the creative 
artist may. = 

Of the artistic devices used in the pi€ture the composition is the 
most tangible. The painter sets us a little higher than his figures and 
close up to them: only a small strip of ground, with a few stones and 
weapons, remains free in front. It is as if we were witnessing the flank 
attack from a kind of backwater, but the conventional base-band preserves 
the effect from being too realistic and creates the distance necessary for 
attistic contemplation: it raises the picture on to a stage. Thus the 
tumult of the fight thunders immediately in front of us from left to 
right, checks and blusters in the middle of the pi€tute, and is about to 
tage past us with a fresh impetus in another dite€tion, on our right. 
It is therefore not an endless stream flowing past us, but an organically 
atticulated and self-contained whole, which nevertheless gives us a clear 
sense of the much larger context in which it stands: formally as well 
as intellectually the battle is concentrated into a focus. The general 
rightward movement is just sufficiently balanced by the countet-move- 
ment of the Persian reinforcements, emphasised by their spears, to 
ptevent the picture from looking like an extra& from a frieze. This 
effect is assisted by the last of the Macedonian horsemen, who is not cut 
off by the frame and is seen half from the front: in mass, movement 
and expression there is a caesuta here. Yet the pi€ute points beyond 
itself on both sides: the Macedonian looks round, a Petsian beckons 


96 


ALEXANDER MOSAIC 


for help: a skilful chassé-croisé which was perhaps Still clearer before 
the injury to the right end of the picture. 

The composition of the piéture in depth is still more complex and 
more masterly. It illustrates the classical capacity for obtaining effects 
which are all the stronger because of the apparent slightness of the 
means. The constant overlapping of one figure by another so that all 
we see is often part of a head, a helmet, a spear, not only gives the 
illusion of depth, but makes us feel that there are far more figures than 
there really are. Apart from spears alone, only about thirty figures are 
indicated, and very few of these are seen entire or in great part. The 
effect of the principal figures is all the stronger, and even where they 
are not set against a background of sky they stand out clearly from the 
throng: thus Alexander is the only horseman who shows in his full 
extension on the picture-surface without foreshortening or appreciable 
overlapping. This effect is assisted by the device of the spears, which 
lead the eye on and divide the piture up; and the tree is used in the 
same way. But what shows the maturity of the art is that a single 
expedient may serve more than one purpose: thus Alexander’s spear, 
and the lines which converge with it and cross it, also help to strengthen 
the sense of movement: we feel the wedge which is being thrust into 
the mass of Persians. 

The treatment of the middle of the pidture is particularly skilful and 
successful, There was a risk of the picture falling into two groups, 
but the expressive cleft which signifies the rescue of Darius knits the 
two parts all the closer together. In the plane of the picture, the chariot, 
with the figures belonging to its mass, is balanced by the Alexander 
gtoup, which is rounded off perfe&tly by the contour of the transfixed 
Petsian and his horse, with the tree. Spatially the two groups are 
vety different, and it is in the depth of the picture that they are connected : 
the conneétion is made behind the cleft by the half-concealed figures 
of the riders and horses with their slanting movement. In these there 
ate many effective contrasts: the rearing horse shows behind and above 
the foundered horse, and the forward movement of the rearing animal 
is intensified by the opposite movement of the horse which is disappearing 
into the press. Parts of both animals are concealed by the dismounted 
Persian, and thereby drawn under the influence of the strong suggestion 
of depth which he and his horse produce. His horse’s body, with its 
verticals which go into the depth of the picture and show on the front 
plane and which have their effec strengthened by the slanting lines of 
neck and spear, is the point of rest in all this tempestuous movement : 


N 97 


ALEXANDER MOSAIC 


from this point the eye finds its way in the depth of the pifture as easily 
as from Alexandet’s spear on the piCture-surface. The horse’s body 
Stands perpendicular to Alexander’s spear and thereby to the general 
direG@tion of the attack; while the horse’s neck, the turn of which 1s 
accentuated and continued by the Persian with his spear, is perpendicular 
to the direCtion of the fugitives. 

At first the painter cannot have been fully conscious of more than 
the main features of all these things ; and even these he can hardly have 
calculated out beforehand: he saw them suddenly standing before his 
mind’s eye. As to details his feeling must have been his guide: it is 
doubtful to what extent he took cognisance of them at the time. Greek 
theory shows that the Greeks went far in this direction. We may suspect 
that in a work so homogeneous and in an Attic master laborious calcula- 
tion played a less important part than if the painter had been a Sicyonian : 
he may have drawn more freely upon the vast resources of Attic pictorial 
experience. So we shall not examine his devices of composition any 
further, although much might still be said. A word is due, however, 
to his objective rendering of space—that is, his treatment of land- 
scape. It shows pretty clearly that there was as yet no landscape paint- 
ing in our sense of the word: not only does the painter confine 
himself to the barest essentials, but he does not display the least interest 
in the specific properties of the soil and the vegetable world. A 
tint which contrasts with that of the heaven, a pait of very regular 
slate-like steps, a few big stones of mote complex shape, and a modest 
little plant, still exadtly like those on the monumental vases of the early 
classical period—that is all we see on the ground; and above the 
figures, only the bare tree against the light sky. In this respect classical 
monumental painting shows itself distin@ly more reticent than archaic 
vase-painting. 

Just so the use of shadow is remarkably reticent compared with the 
plentiful use of high-lights ; there is enough shadow to make the unity 
of the lighting clear, but the cast-shadow is neither carried through 
completely nor used as an independent means of pictorial effe@. In this 
matter also the painter’s attitude was not naturalistic, and the same may 
be said of his colouring. His colouring is the ripe fruit of the old four- 
colour painting, which confined itself to black, white, red and yellow, 
and which appears in some of the white lekythoi, while others make 
free use of bright colours. All that a painter could aim at with this 
sober uniform scheme of colour was the translation of reality into a 
special artistic colour-world: but in this even the mosaicist has attained 


98 


NIOBE 


a perfect harmony, nay, a certain tonality: for the abundance of half- 
tones and the subduedness of the contrasts produce a uniform general 
tone made up of white, yellow ochre, red and brownish-black, in spite 
of the definiteness of the local colours. It is much finer, lighter and 
aitier than one would guess from the coloured reproduétions hitherto 
published. We cannot analyse the colouring here as we have analysed 
the composition, much as the composition owes to the colouring, from 
balance in the piture-plane to aerial perspective. ‘Two remarks only. 
Even if the head of a third black horse and a bit of yellow drapery were 
not preserved at the left extremity of the picture, we should have to 
supply those colours in that place. And even if we did not recognise 
Alexander from the composition and from the head-type, expressive 
even in the mosaic, we should know him from the colours reserved for 
him alone: the wonderful contrast of light silvery shimmer and deep, 
glowing Burgundy ted. Many will think so much comment excessive, 
and all will be inclined, with Goethe, ‘ after examination and research 
to revert to simple admiration.’ 

We now turn to a piure which, after the Alexander mosaic, has the Fig. 120 
best claim to be regarded as an actual copy of an important work from 
the later fourth century or the early Hellenistic period: the Niobe from 
Pompeii. Painted on a marble slab nearly forty centimetres high, it 
may have stood to its original much as a middling coloured print of the 
old kind to a work of the Renaissance. We may suppose that nothing 
appreciably more accurate could have been obtained at the time, unless 
by commissioning a first-rate painter to make a full-size copy dite& from 
the original. At any rate there are no traces here of such blunders 
as Alexandros made when he copied the Knucklebone-players: but (Fig. 117) 
owing to the reduction in size, which is no doubt substantial, many 
subtleties must have been lost. True, there is no external evidence that 
the original was really much larger: but the spirit of the picture, and 
its effet upon subsequent art right down to the sarcophagi of the later 
imperial period, postulate a more imposing scale than that of a cabinet 
picture. A comparison with corresponding wall-paintings makes one 
feel this strongly. Besides the reduced scale, thete is the bad presetva- 
tion: the constru@tion of the Niobe group itself has suffered, and what 
the colour was like we can hardly judge: that which remains is merely 
underpainting. 

The piure is very important for our knowledge of Greek rendering 
of space. But this is not the only interest of the composition. The 
touchstone of its merit is that it is as simple as it is complex, that almost 


29 


NIOBE 


every device serves more than one purpose, and that they all fit effort- 
lessly into each other to produce a united effe&. The intellectual content 
of this effect is so strong that it would not be fair to the work to begin 
with the analysis of the form. Four figures have sufficed the painter 
to bring the whole catastrophe of the tragedy of Niobe before our eyes. 
In front of the palace we see Niobe clasping her youngest daughter to 
protect her, but without hope: understanding, dumbly grieving, almost 
accusing, she raises her eyes to heaven—not to her enemy Artemis, 
like her wailing child, but to Zeus, who lets her suffer this, her a goddess 
of his race. Her glance crosses the emblem of her divine pride, the 
gteat sceptre which has fallen from her hand: behind her it cuts slanting | 
through surface and depth of the pidure like a lightning-stroke. It is Ee 
as if this lightning had struck the older girl, who sinks back dying in the 
atms of the nurse: it cuts shrilly through the soft rounded lines of the 


gtoup. The nurse bends over her charge, and has eyes only for that 
movingly peaceful death: she does not know whence the disaster comes. 3 
What a contrast between the two groups, who ate yet one in gtief! And a 
over both looms the royal palace, adorned for festival, now desolate : + 


for we know and Niobe divines that while the daughters are dying at 
home, the sons ate dying on the mountain. 

The picture is so homogeneous that we could not describe its intel- 
lectual content without referring to the formal means by which the effects 
ate obtained. They show the lofty assurance of a master who stands 
on the heights of a fully developed att: for he has not merely mastered a 
spatial depth—his picture lives in it. As a whole, as well as in its parts, | 
it is constructed slanting into depth away from the speéator, and a few 
pure front-views and pure side-views only aé& as steps to give the move- 
ment into depth articulation and clearness. To apply the often mis- 
leading standards of modern art, one is tempted to say that this is not . 
classical any longer, but baroque : no symmetry or balance in the piature- 
plane, but the entire picture subordinated to a strong accent neat one 
side and to the movement obliquely into depth. But Greek art does 
not fit perfectly into classifications made for modern art, instructive as 
the comparison may sometimes be in detail. The unsymmetrical dis- 
placement of the centre of interest—a kind of dynamic balance—oceurs 

(Fig. 117) already in the pi€ture of the Knucklebone-players, which stands close to 
the art of the Parthenon, and the oblique arrangement of the figure- 
composition begins in pictures which are not much later. If we can find 
traces of an organic development in a field where our knowledge i is sO 
scanty, the history of the relation of the figures to the ait-space above 


Ae Oe Ne eee Ae, 


s 
: 
3 


100 


NIOBE 


them and to the archite@ture will probably have run on the same lines. 
The relation in the Niobe is that the figurework, or at any rate the chief 
figure, still dominates the pi€ture. Greek panel-painting never went 
beyond this, and could not go beyond it, because it did not develop a 
landscape painting equivalent to its figure-painting. 

The way in which the monumental archite@ture is made to assist the 
effect of the figure-composition is thoroughly Greek. We have already 
mentioned the expression value of the architeG@ture: the proud building 
Stands unharmed, while its inmates are crushed by Fate. So also its 
crystalline forms contrast with the organic life of the figures. Each 
group has a spatial layer of architeture corresponding to it. The 
verticals and horizontals of the corner pillars rise stiff and hard above 
the living curves of the bodies. These four elements in the picture are 
united by the sceptte of Niobe, which crosses them diagonally—like a 
line drawn through Niobe’s pride and fortune—and provides the spatial 
counterpoise to the obliqueness of the composition; in the picture- 
plane, also, it gives the desired countet-movement to the outstretched 
body of the dying girl and the look of Niobe. Overlapping plays its 
usual part as a space-maker. The contour of the Niobe group, with 
much else, has suffered. But the remains of her right armpit prove 
that her right hand as well as her left was clasping the child, so that 
the contour approaches the shape of an oval, and its compactness is only 
broken by the expressive raising of the head. The hand of Niobe 
shows, on a small scale, the same sense of form as appears clearly in the 
nurse group: the outline of the nurse, and the outstretched arms of the 
dying girl, lead the eye in melodious circles. What a contrast there is, 
not of expression merely, but of two epochs, two worlds of feeling, 
if we compate these softly dying arms with the arms of the falling 
Amazon on the krater of Euphronios, or even the arm of the Lapith (Fi. 47) 
woman in the early classical krater in Florence! The only check to the (Fi. 74) 
cutves in our group is the right angle of the nurse’s arm: the over- 
lapping in the figures and the cloak spread on the ground preserve it 
from over-sculptural compactness. 

Of the beauty of the drawing the small copy can give us but a faint 
echo. But the close affinity to the best late Attic vase-pictures is unmis- (Fig. 110) 
takable. Thete is no external eyidence showing to what school the 
original belonged, for there was much interchange of ideas between 
Athens and Sicyon, as we see in sculpture and the minor arts: but 
internal evidence points to Athens. It is the Attic spirit which breathes 
in this pi€ture, the spirit of Attic tragedy, perhaps of the Sophoclean Niobe. 


IOI 


ACHILLES AND BRISEIS 


Fig.122 ‘The wall-picture of Achilles dismissing Briseis is usually considered 
to be a fairly accurate copy, and its large scale allowed of a different 
execution and a different effect from what was possible in the Niobe. 
The first great outburst of Hellenism, and the last—the poetry of Homer, 
and the expedition of Alexander—seem to be united in this pi@ure: 
the soft beauty and refinement of the fourth century, glowing with 
prtimaeval fire; the simple great humanity of the Homeric world, 
unspoiled by five hundred years of an unexampled civilisation. Achilles’ 
look and his great gesture dominate the picture. From the easy dignity 
with which he has been sitting in his throne before his tent, he has raised 
his head and his hand. He looks with wide, flaming eyes at the weeping 
Briseis, whom Patroclus leads gently forward. Deep indignation at a 
wanton injury, less to love than to honour, lightens from a countenance 
that stands out fearfully dark against a shining shield. But the pathos 
does not break out; it is held in by a kingly self-control, and kingly 
is the gesture of the outstretched hand which releases the maid without 
a word. And an awful silence broods over the whole pi&ture. Behind 
the throne, the aged Phoenix looks down at Achilles in deep anxiety, 
the heralds of Agamemnon look in front of them with a puzzled expres- 
sion, and the guards in the background ate silent witnesses of the 
fateful event. 

Not a teat from Briseis. She is not Andromache, or Nausicaa: it is 
more a question of honour than of the maiden. Her eye affe&ts us pain- 
fully, we would fain avoid it, like the heralds, to spate the feelings of 
Achilles. But at the same time we understand that the guard behind 
Achilles follows his master’s gaze: this maiden is not his queen; he 
regards her in some. measure as his comrade; his duty is in front of the 
tent, hers inside it; and the dark depth of the tent shows significantly 
behind her. The painter has not shrunk from eStablishing that con- 
nexion between the maiden and the spectator which gives many fourth- 
century works a touch of artificiality, of ostentatiousness, which forms ; : 
an unpleasant contrast to the noble modesty of the Idolino. | 

We shall not discuss the composition at such length as in the preceding 
pictures. The great main lines are not alone in bringing pause and 
rest into the wealth of changing movement: the use of shields to form 
a restful background for the heads of the principal personages is even 

(Fig. 123) more noticeable here than in our next pidture, Achilles in Skyros. 
Lighting is used for the same purpose: the shield behind Achilles, slightly 
aslant, refle&ts the light which streams over him, and aureoles the head 
which dominates the picture. The effe& of the head and its gaze is 


TO2 


ACHILLES IN SKYROS 


heightened rather than impaired by the echo in the helmeted héad on a 
dark background behind the shield: such parallelisms repel us at first 
and do harm in unskilful hands, but they are popular with Greek painters, 
whose feeling was mote archite€tural than ours. Striking examples are (Fig. 126) 
the Pergamene Telephos from Herculaneum and the magnificent Omphale 
from Pompeii. The head of the warrior behind Briseis answers this (Fig. 128) 
head like a rhyme, and emphasises the general displacement of the masses 
tightwatds. In this respe& the balance of the pi€ture is dynamic: it 
is based on the great gesture of Achilles, which lightens into the empty 
space in front of him: from there he lets Briseis go ; from there she will 
return, after infinite disaster. In composition and expression, which are 
here one, arm and spear perform the same duty as the sceptre of Niobe : (Fig. 120) 
a Stroke, a cut, goes through the middle of the pi@ure. If we look at 
the figure of Achilles by itself, the effect of the spear is the same as in 
many indolent seated figures, whose swelling forms are emphasised by 
the stiff, Straight sceptre; there it expresses indolent rest, here the kingly 
moderation with which Achilles holds himself in hand. 

The numerous figures-and groups, dovetailed into each other in 
space, have been combined by the painter to give a single impression of 
mass: the tent provides them with a suitable background and suppott : 
we do not expeé to see mote, although the point of vision is not so 
low as in the Alexander mosaic. We are therefore surprised by a slight 
indication of landscape, hardly visible, it is true, in our reproduction. 
With a freedom which must have been readily conceded at that time, 
before the development of Hellenistic landscape, a glimpse of the sea 
is given in the left upper corner of the pi@ure, with the high prows of 
three far-off ships. They overlap each other and are overlapped by the 
corner of the tent. ‘The horizon is fairly high, viewed therefore from 
a higher point than the figures. The skilful use of overlapping not 
only produces a spatial effe& of a general kind, but clamps together the 
several parts of the picture with their different perspectives. It is unlikely 
that this is an arbitrary addition by the copyist: it seems to give us a 
glimpse of the origin of landscape painting from the backgrounds of 
fioure-pictutes. 

Our reproduétion of the pi€ure of Achilles in Skyros at last gives Fig. 123 
a notion of the colouring of an ancient painting. In this picture the 
effect of the colour is so strong that one can almost forget the representa- 
tion, interesting as it is. This colour symphony, with its swift move- 
ment, its easy flow and its vaporous shimmer, is the most important 
extant example of ancient colouring. In the words of Paul Herrmann, 


103 


ACHILLES IN SKYROS 


the finest judge of Pompeian painting, the picture ‘ is seen and constructed 
entitely in colours, as modern art, even the most modern, might under- 
stand the phrase, and a wealth of the subtlest and most delicate transitions— 
tones flowing, gliding, sparkling into each other—gives it an indissoluble 
solidity of inner artistic strudtute.’ 

The colours vaty from the dominant copper-red, now brightly 
glowing, now subdued and clouded, which is answered by a delicate 
mignonette green, to the most fragrant of lilacs and whites. But what 
is almost more astonishing than this symphony of colour, light and air 
is that the form, nay, even the line, is all the while retained. ‘This con- 
stitutes a fundamental difference between Greek painting and modetn 
painting since the baroque period. It is difficult to believe that the 
Pompeian wall-painter, in an intoxication of light and colour which 
accords with the general illusionism of Claudio-Flavian petiod, by sheer 
dint of personal endowment surpassed everything that earlier painting 
had achieved: but such a contention could not be disproved in the 
ptesent state of knowledge. 

But the question becomes less important if we view the matter from 
a somewhat greater distance. Greek colouring, from the second half 
of the fifth century to the imperial age, even far into the Byzantine age, 
will appear to the northerner as a unity: the bright splendour of a 
fairer world, strange to him; a wealth of colour and tone, such as Homer 
reveals in his epithets of the sea, such as is conjured up by a half-cloudy 
sunset in the light sea-fresh heat of a southern summer. In nature as 
in art the bright, clear southern light creates an infinite multitude of 
hues, tones down apparently discordant colours into a harmony by 
means of its subtle gradations, will not let its vapour become mist, and 
dyes its very veils in shining colour. Thus the sky has light cloud- 
lilac next to mignonette, and cloud-orange next to bluish green; the 
sky colour changes from radiant light blue to blue-green, pale green, 
yellow-green, pale yellow, orange; and all these colours ate heightened 
by the contrast of the hundred greys of the clouds. Silvery tones appear 


in the sky by full daylight, and in the pi€ures many of the colours have 


a silver shimmer. 

The old triad, yellow, light-blue and violet, which is as popular 
at Pompeii as in the sarcophagus of Alexander, has its prototype in nature. 
The strength and frequency of pale lilac and dark violet in the landscape 
are astonishing, and luminous light-blue shadows appear both on the 
mountains and on the sea, when sungilt rocks are refleéted on its faintly 
stirred surface. Shadows so full of light are not known in the north : 


104 


agi, 
< 
o 
na 


ACHILLES IN SKYROS 


one understands them when one sees how the blue and indeed at evening 
the greenish colour of the sky persists unaltered in the light haze which 
clothes the rocks and shore. Thus Greek colouring has its roots deep 
in nature, although what it borrows it uses with full artistic freedom : 
the colouring is no less idealistic than the rendering of form and the 
composition. An ideal play of colour, such as Plato saw in his imagina- 
tion, was the main preoccupation of the artist. It is inspired by nature, 
but in Greek fashion transferred to men and things: in landscape- 
painting itself a picture seldom rises to this height. 

To return to our picture: the subject is Odysseus and Diomede 
discovering Achilles, whom his mother Thetis had concealed in Skyros 
among the daughters of King Lycomedes: thus began the fulfilment 
of his destiny, to win the highest fame, but an early death. The heroes, 
disguised as merchants, gained access to the maidens of the royal house : 
they laid precious jewels before them, and beautiful weapons. Suddenly 
one of their companions sounded the alarm, as if the house were attacked 
by enemies. The maidens scattered in horror, but Achilles, though in 
woman’s clothes, betrayed his heroic spirit by seizing the weapons. 

This is the moment shown in our picture. It is the best artistically 
of a number of replicas, which must go back to an original of the late 
fourth or the third century. To the left of the picture about a third of 
it is lost: we tacitly restore this in our description after a complete 
specimen. Only the trumpeter, however, is quite certain: part of his 
long trumpet is preserved in our picture high up on the left : the maidens, 
treated as subsidiary figures by the Pompeian painters, may have varied 
on the left from copy to copy as they vary on the right. 

The long alarm sounded by the trumpeter in the background has 
done its work. Achilles has sprung up with flaming eyes and seized 
shield and sword. But at the same moment Diomede clasps him from 
behind and Odysseus grips his tightening arm, looks hard into his face, 
and we can almost hear his voice: ‘ Achilles!’ Deidameia flies horror- 
Stricken, her body almost bared by the violent movement, and looks back 
over her shoulder; beside her, half-concealed, is one of her sisters, 
and there is another, motionless with terror, behind Odysseus. In the 
middle, Lykomedes, seated above the tumult, raises his eyes to Zeus : 
he realises the critical moment, as Niobe the irresistibleness of fate. 
Two wattiors stand beside him: the surfaces of the shields throw up 
the dark heads of Diomede and Odysseus, a popular device, as we 
have seen, at the time. It helps the individual figure and the expres- 
sive contour to retain their old precedence even in a crowded spatial 


fe) 105 


THESEUS AND THE MINOTAUR 


composition. The archite€ture frames and articulates the dense mass of 
figures. The upper half of the pifure is divided into regular sections 
by two columns which stand in front of the door-jambs: the broad 
opening in the middle, with the folding-door half open, leads the eye 
into depth. ‘These systems of verticals give the picture a restful back- 
ground, heighten by contrast the expression of movement in the numerous 
diagonals connected into zigzags, and combine with the main shape of 
the figure-composition to form a simple, clear pi€ture-scheme. Although 
this scheme does not obtrude itself upon the eye, we feel its calming, 
clarifying effect through the dramatic agitation of the picture. 
An instructive light is cast upon the pratice of wall-painters by the 
Fig. 124 four pitures of Theseus after his vitory over the Minotaur. Two still 
remain, one of them—that reproduced—incomplete: the third is known 
from a fifteenth-century pen-drawing, and a fourth, in its main features, 
from a description. The fourth unites all the elements of the others : 
in the middle Theseus, and a pair of children expressing their gratitude 
to him with tender, impulsive gestures; to the right more children; to 
the left the entrance to the labyrinth, and the dead Minotaur in front 
of it; above, Artemis sitting on the rocks. The well-preserved version 
from Pompeii shows Theseus in front of one of the towers of the 
labyrinth, and to the left the corpse protruding from the dark entrance. 
Theseus shoulders his club; a boy kisses his right hand, another his 
left foot. To the right come five big girls close together, preceded 
by an aged pedagogue with a little boy. The heads are strongly indi- 
vidualised, and give us the painful impression that the family of the 
master of the house has here been immortalised. We leave this Roman 
vulgarity far behind in the magnificent pi€tute from Herculaneum. It 
has suffered so severely that the figure of Theseus dominates it almost 
too exclusively. But this is only an exaggeration of the effect of the 
picture before it was damaged: the composition really does cluster 
mote closely round Theseus, the troop of children is smaller, and the 
gate between it and the Minotaur is placed slanting behind Theseus. The 
monster’s huge body slants through the pi€ture from left front to right 
back; one of his knees is drawn up and shows behind Theseus’ legs. 
Above on the left is Artemis, seated on the rocks: in the Pompeian 
picture she is absent, right and left are interchanged in several places, 
and the attitudes of the children are not quite the same. . 
An important painting stands at the back of these wall-pi€tutes. The 
wonderful figure of Theseus in the Herculanean version shows us where 
to look for the original: the Theseus is a compound of Praxitelean 


106 


THESEUS AND THE MINOTAUR 


beauty, Lysippic tenseness, and Scopaic fire, an Attic work, therefore, 
from the second half of the fourth century. And the composition suits 
this date. We should all like to think that the Herculanean pi@ure, 
rather than the Pompeian, preserves the original form, but that would 
be a mere expression of feeling, not necessarily final, were it not for 
the pen-drawing, which repeats the main group of the Herculanean 
picture almost exaétly, only reversed. So three hundred years before 
the excavation of the cities of Vesuvius, a similar pi€ture existed, probably 
in Rome, and was current, apparently in engravings—hence the reversing. 
Whether a transformation had taken place between these two pictures 
and the original we cannot say. It is by no means necessary to suppose 
sO: we may assume that the wall-painters copied a panel piCture which 
was preserved in Rome. It is doubtful, however, whether the original 
confined itself to the Theseus group with three or four children and 
perhaps a wall for background, or whether the entrance to the labyrinth, 
with more children, was also given, and the Artemis on the rocks. That 
the pen-drawing should give the principal group only would be intelligible 
even if its model contained more: but the model itself may have been 
a mere extract, perhaps in a decorative context. If the Herculanean 
composition seems a trifle cramped, that is due to the narrowness of the 
niched space at the painter’s disposal. Other things being equal, one 
would regret the absence of the deep, dark entrance to the labyrinth 
and of the additional children, and the tall gate called for just such a 
counterpoise as is provided by the goddess on her high seat ; diagonally, 
she balances the children as well. The fundamental type of the picture 
can be traced back to the middle of the fifth century. An Attic cup 
shows Theseus, with Nike bringing him a wreath, standing frontal 
before the corpse of the Minotaur, which leans against a column at the 
entrance to the labyrinth: the atmosphere after the fight is rendered 
with Polygnotan simplicity, and the sentimental trait of the grateful 
children is still lacking. 

We pass into a quieter world with a small picture (rather smaller Fig. 125 
than the Niobe), which is one of a series found at Herculaneum (not 
Stabiae) and described by Winckelmann. They are stucco pictures which 
were let into the plaster of the wall. They mark a sort of transition from 
the panel to the wall-picture, and we are thus prepared for particularly 
careful execution. This, and the severe rendering of form and of space, 
make it certain that the artist intended to copy panel-pictures of the later 
fourth or the third century. Our picture shows us a victorious actor 
about to dedicate a mask as a thank-offering. The indication of space 


IO7 


TELEPHOS 


is exceedingly simple: instead of the interior archite€@ture seen in the 
other pictures of the series, all we have is a back-wall with a doot-opening. 
In the composition there is no attempt at symmetry or equable space- 
filling: only a free, choicely rhythmical balance, which gives us the 
feeling of space even without the assistance of the atchite@ure. ‘The 
men’s arms and staves lead the eye through the air with a gentle vibration, 
and their gaze diretts ours towards the girl who is writing the dedicatory 
lines below the mask. She alone is shown in full profile parallel to the .. 
picture-sutface : from her the movement is into the depth of the pi@ure ‘ 
(Fig. 122)0n both sides, just as from the Patroclus in the Dismissal of Briseis. 
Beside her, in the very middle of the piture, stands the powerful chair- 
leg with its sharp divisions, which gives a firm support to a composition 
light as air. It is assisted by the door-opening, which is moved a trifle 
to the left for the sake of balance. The simplicity of these devices is 
almost fastidious, at any tate it is ingenious and graceful. It makes us 
think of Menander, and it is of Menander’s portrait that the head of 
the actor, with its simple yet subtle naturalism, reminds us. ‘There is 
the same spirit in the lightsome fragrant colouring. It is much richer 
than our monotone reproduaion would suggest. Even the apparently 
white garments shimmer with an extraordinary variety of delicate tints, 
which are blended into a harmony of Mozartt-like lightness. 
An extreme contrast to this delicate little pi@ure is given by a great 
monumental work which is a produé of the mature Hellenistic art of 
Fig. 126 Asia Minor: it represents the finding of the infant Telephos in the 
mountains of Arcadia by his father Herakles. ‘There is not the least 
reason to doubt that this wall-pi€ture, painted by the confident hand of 
a master, is a copy of a Pergamene original. The charaéter of the whole 4 
and of the parts, and internal evidence as well as external, point to its oan 
being an uncontaminated Pergamene work. Its main elements, Herakles, 
and the child suckled by the hind and watched over by the eagle, appear 
together and in the same form, even to details, on Pergamene coins : 
the pose of Herakles is similar in the small frieze on the Pergamene 
altar, and the relationship between figures, rock and air is the same. 
The massive heaviness and compression of the forms, and the abundance 
of minor forms, sometimes, as in the head of Herakles, exaggerated to 
gtotesqueness, accord perfectly with the style of the altar reliefs : and the 
gteat draped female figure is closely akin to contemporaty female statues. 
But, even in the copy, the piéture is on a higher level than the decorative 
teliefs, as is natural in an unaided work by a great master: and the 
relation between the two is something like that between Style and 


108 


TELEPHOS 


mannerism. In the words of Herrmann, ‘ the picture is in the grandest 
Style, the impression it gives is Strangely solemn and majestic, the great, 
heavy figures are of heroic mould, and as if weathered by mountain 
ait: above all, Arcadia, couched spaciously on the mountain-masses, as 
if made of primaeval matter and as if throned there for eternity, with 
the great folds of her bright garments heaving round her like the pure, 
cleat atmosphere of the mountain-peaks.’ 

The nymph gazes far away into the distance, and her eyes are slightly 
raised : but what she sees is not of this world: the prophetic eye of the 
local goddess discerns the future greatness of that royal house of Pergamon, 
which is destined to spring from the child who is here miraculously 
nourished, guarded, discovered. The mythical ancestor, his father 
Herakles, and the eagle of Zeus, the Parthenos acting as a goddess of 
destiny, showing Herakles the marvel and explaining it, and the lion 
which does not harm the child: all these unite to glorify the Attalids, 
sprung from Telephos. Hence the ‘solemn majesty’ of the fateful 
moment, which even the lion seems to feel—not a true lion; Greek 
attists had seldom seen living lions—but a magnificent creature of wild 
nature. And the effe& is heightened by contrasts: the exquisite idyll 
of the suckling babe, unaware of his high destiny, and the unconcerned 
laugh of the satyr-lad, a child of nature in the fullest sense, delighted 
with the unusual spectacle. 

All this is shaped into a pi@ture with masterly att. The composition 
is as magnificent as the conception. Two diagonals cross, both on the 
surface and in space. From the point of view of form, the line from 
Herakles to the satyr is the more important. From the intellectual point 
of view, the other: it is determined by the look of Herakles, by the 
look and pointing arm of the Parthenos, it is continued in the Telephos, 
and spatially can be felt in the rocks. The ends converge—the heads, 
the wings and the shepherd’s crook: and a firm hold in all this move- 
ment is provided by the vertical sceptre of Arcadia, which at the same 
time strengthens her air of immovable rest. Her arm is in the very 
middle of the surface, and the folds continue this central axis down- 
watds. The expressive arrangement of the heads in pairs, the two heads 
in each pair being linked together by light and shade, and by a common 
of a contrasting inclination, is an expedient which we have already 
encountered more than once: the most effective example of two heads 
looking in the same direction was Achilles and his bodyguard in the (Fig. 122) 
picture of Briseis. We shall not analyse the artistic devices further : 
but the Telephos group, which has been rightly styled a picture in itself, 


109 


TELEPHOS 


calls for a word. To bring it into proper prominence, the painter has 
given it a special background consisting of the re€tangular side of a tock. 
The two diagonals of the piéture are repeated in the Telephos group, 
but it is quite complete in itself—an ingenious organism with a profusion 
of lines, parallels and thrusts running through it. The head and neck 
of the hind bring the spatial slant back upon itself, and the right thigh 
of the boy cuts across it and holds it firm. The clear atrangement of all 
these various forms and the charming expression of the group combine 
to produce a most attractive effe&t, which is further enhanced by the 
special lighting. The basket of fruit is more of an accessory, but it 
has an existence of its own as a Still-life. Such is the aspect of Greek 
monumental landscape-painting : Nature is suggested and incarnated. 

In the colouring of the painting it is not the tint but the tone that 
predominates : and that is why the colouring comes out so well in the 
reproduction. In Greece as in the seventeenth century, tonality is a 
mark of a late stage of development, and the strong effeéts of light and 
shade are another. Compared with baroque painting of the seventeenth 
century the lighting is still classical, that is, of a fairly uniform lightness. 
This is typical of the relation of the so-called baroque style of the Greeks 
to the real baroque of modern art: the Greek style contains certain 
baroque elements, beginnings of baroque, but in the main it conforms 
to the classical style. The Telephos pi@ure is an excellent example of 
this rule. In spite of the courtly feeling in it, and the complication of 
the contrasts and relations, it still breathes, on the whole, the spirit of 
classical grandeur and simplicity. The most baroque part of it is the 
face of Herakles, the forms of which are in part forcibly exaggerated, 
in part coarsely naturalistic: there are also strong contrasts of chiaroscuro 
in the face ; but even so the chief use of light and shade in the face is 
to model the forms, just as in the rich swelling body. The head of 
the satyr-boy has reminded some of Frans Hals: and the ptimaeval 
force with which this child of nature is conceived does indeed recall 
the Dutchman. But there is nothing specifically baroque in that: post- 
classical we may call it, and so the other Petgamene or Asianic traits 
in the picture. 

The same art, the eastern Greek art of the Hellenistic period, no 
doubt gave rise to one of the most powerful of all Pompeian paintings. 

Fig. 128 The theme is the shameful bondage of Herakles in the house of the 
Lydian queen Omphale, and the pi@ure has a tragic grandeur. It 
belongs to a cycle of three magnificent compositions, all celebrating 
the might of Dionysos. Invention and execution are almost on a level : 


1IO 


HERAKLES AND OMPHALE 


mural painting reaches a point at which a further approximation to panel- 
painting would only have been possible at the expense of the freshness 
and power of the impression. Everything is so homogeneous here, so 
large and sure and full of blood and strength, that one hardly cates to 
inquire about models and accuracy. But the inquiry forces itself upon 
us, for no other picture gives us such a strong feeling of having Hellenistic 
att before us at its best, free from bombast and empty pathos, yet full 
of exuberant power and confident expressiveness. The Telephos from 
Herculaneum comes nearest to it; but in the Telephos one or two late (Fi. 126) 
Pergamene elements impair the simple grandeur of the effect: in this 
respect the Herakles, especially, of the Herculanean pidure cannot 
compare with the Pompeian. We might think that we had works of the 
third century before us. But the Pompeian painter is so full of the 
spirit of the great Hellenistic age that in the absence of independent 
replicas it is impossible to say whether the pictures are accurate copies 
ot fresh creations freely inspired by earlier works. It is difficult to 
believe that they are laboriously accurate copies down to the details of 
the pictorial handling. 

We confine ourselves to the picture of Omphale, the only one which 
is tolerably well preserved. Surface and space are full of figures, with 
only a little air above them. There are eight full-grown persons, only 
three of them fully visible, and three small Erotes: and yet we have 
the same impression of multitude as in similar paintings by Rubens, 
whose name has often been mentioned in connexion with this work. 
All these are dominated by the athletic figure of Herakles, a head taller 
than any of them: his powerful body, almost naked, the sunburnt skin 
a wonderful shimmering golden-brown, stands out from the blue of the 
upper half, and leads on to the red and gold of the lower. Julius Lange 
says that the figure is ‘ of incomparable brightness, and as rich in colour 
as a tipe plum.’ No one who is acquainted with sun-browned male 
bodies will consider that the comparison is unworthy of the strength 
shown in the figure; for the living, swelling tissue of muscle-flesh and 
skin is not dead steel. But this giant with the huge chest and the bull 
neck is unsteady on his legs: with his right arm he leans heavily on the 
shoulders of the obese, leering Priapus ; and his head leans over in the 
same direction. From the point, of view of composition, the slight 
slant of the thyrsus which he holds in his left balances the bend of the 
great central figure: but from the point of view of expression, the 
vinous dependence of the Greek hero upon his unworthy Asiatic rétainer 
finds no counterpoise: we feel the shame which hé himself betrays in 


It! 


HERAKLES AND OMPHALE 


his tortured features, despite the stupefying fumes and the wild music 
shrilling at his ear, and we see the triumph of Omphale, who stands 
there with the look of a cold coquette, flaunting herself in Herakles’ 
lion-skin and holding his club. 

Herakles has reason to turn away from her: for the huge drinking- 
bowl, with which a little Eros is playing at his feet, has not made him 
quite insensible: and an iris-wreathed girl, one of Omphale’s maidens, 
feels as he feels : she drops the eyes which have seen him thus. A second 
maiden beside her looks up at him, and behind Omphale is the fourth 
of this tow of heads, that of the brown Lydian youth on whose raised 
knee the queen leans. His head is turned in exaétly the same dite@tion 
as hets—that device of emphasis by doubling which we have encounteted 

(Figs. 122, several times already, for instance in the Briseis and in the Telephos. 
126) Behind Priapus appear the head and arm of a girl who beats her tympanon 
at the ear of Herakles, while a little Eros blows hard over his shoulder 
into his other ear. Hialf-visible behind the girl is the pine-wreathed 
head of a sunburnt lad, probably a satyr, and behind the legs of Priapus 
another Eros peeps out, who lifts the long garment off the ground and 
wonders at the view which meets his eyes under the fruit-filled lap. The 
quiver of Herakles lies in the corner. 
This composition of bodies, heads and garments is unusually com- 
(Figs. 121, plex, and yet as clear and simple as in the Briseis or even in the Alexander 
122) mosaic. It divides itself into a larger Herakles group and a smaller 
Omphale group: the Omphale group is seen in three-quarter profile 
and extends into the depth of the picture, while the Herakles group is 
almost frontal and comes out of the pi@ure-depth like a procession 
which stops in front of the spe@ator. The division is as palpable as in 
the mosaic, and in the pidture-plane it is emphasised by the mantle and 
thyrsus of Herakles. In spite of their spatial values the three principal 
figures stand in the same plane, which reaches to the front plane of the 
picture and so to the spectator. This is of a piece with the low point 
of vision, and with the scantiness of the frame compared to the crowded 
luxuriance of the figures, which is heightened to a powerful mass in the 
figure of Herakles. Both form and spirit show the same Asianic style, 
exuberantly strong and sensuous, felt through and through and therefore 
without empty formalism : style, not mannerism. | 

In the colouring also we find the same habit of working freely with 
gteat masses, and of obtaining effeéts by means of great contrasts which 
are yet closely linked to each other. ‘Thus the blue and the red of the 
upper and the lower halves of the pi€ture are dovetailed into one another 


UTZ, 


2 


OTHER WALL-PAINTINGS 


by suitable distribution and through the triad with yellow, the comple- 
mentary colour to blue, as well as by mixture with it : a rhythm of colour 
which accompanies and intersects the rhythm of form. ‘The rhythm of 
form, as far as the plane surface is concerned, consists chiefly of the 
tepeated unison and counterplay of the diagonals, the dominant of the 
diagonals being given in the bodies of Herakles and Omphale: a few 
vetticals and horizontals give support to the whole composition and rest 
to the eye. We shall not go into further detail; but we must draw 
attention to the ingenious arrangement of the heads in rhyming couplets, 
contrasts and rhythmic series: Omphale and her servant; Herakles 
and the sympathetic maiden; Priapus and the tympanon player; the 
maidens looking up and looking down, while Omphale and the Lydian 
look straight in front of them. All these things do not force themselves 
upon us, but by clarifying, ordering and uniting they contribute to the 
tich harmony of the total effet. But the whole picture is dominated 
by that one great accent, the giant figure of Herakles, brought to such 
shame, made the plaything of a vain woman and of little children. 

The Herakles and Omphale appears to us moderns to be a thoroughly 
individual creation. Not so the picture of Dionysos finding the deserted 
Ariadne on the strand of Naxos. It is one term in a typological series Fig. 127 
which can be traced back as far as the turn of the fifth and fourth centuries, 
and there ate many variations of it in late wall-painting. We ate not 
concerned, however, with the typology: our pi@ture, as we have it, 
gives us the impression of a grand creation in the Hellenistic étyle. 
Ariadne lies sleeping in the lap of Hypnos, and a little Eros unveils her 
shining body to the wondering Dionysos and to us, to whom her back 
is turned. Behind the splendid figure of Dionysos, who has just come 
up, his garments sweeping round him, comes the train of his followers : 
they stretch obliquely into the depth of the picture. Pan raises his 
hand in astonishment: the others ate busy with their own concerns. 
The group in the middle distance is delightful: the type occurs as early 
as the fourth century on Italian vases: assisted by a satyr, old Silenus 
is laboriously climbing a path between steep rocks. Beside him a young 
satyt beckons to two others who clamber up the high rocks in the middle 
and look down. It is not only the rendering of the forms that seems to 
be Hellenistic, but the composition with its strong movement into the 
depth of the pifure. And the great line slanting into depth, which cuts 
the picture diagonally, from Dionysos to the aity distance between the 
rocks, bears witness to a strong feeling for nature as well. These are 
not mere landscape side-scenes in a figure-picture: they make us feel 


P 19 


Fig. 129 


Fig. 130 


Fig. 131 


DAPHNE 


the progress of the god and his troop through open country. In this 
picture we see the legacy of the classical period, shaped in the spirit of 
the Hellenistic age: so much is clear, and the question whether the work 
is an accurate copy of an earlier painting is of minor importance. 

The same question arises when we turn to the piéture of Apollo and 
Daphne. ‘There ate several versions: that which we figure enables us 
to appreciate the grand design of the original. Apollo has overtaken 
the fleeing nymph. As he embraces her, his mantle slips from his body, 
while Daphne’s floating garment reveals the shining virgin form almost 
entire. She sinks on her knees, Apollo bends over her, but she swetves 
violently away, and the passion of her refusal flashes to heaven in the 
outstretched arm and the desperate look, and stits the pity of the gods. 
The laurel-tree into which she is transformed crowns the group; the 
trunk shining between his head and her raised arm and separating them. 
There is no external metamorphosis as in the well-known statue, but the 
spectator who is acquainted with the story knows that the next moment 
the god will clasp the young laurel-tree, and the passionate cry of the 
virgin will have died away in the dreamy rustle of leaves. Other piétutes 
of the same subject know nothing of this stormy agitation, and many of 
them are so superficial that it would be idle to look for earlier originals 
behind them. There is one, however, in which the quiet figures glow 
with passion. Apollo is seated, and the maiden is leaning against a wall 
in front of him: with an expression of burning desire which can be 
felt all through him, he draws the garment from her body. She only 
taises her hand a little and looks away with eyes full of emotion but 
losing themselves in the distance. ‘The transformation is not indicated, 
but we feel it: the touch of the god seems to root the maiden to the 
ground, and her consciousness is on the point of extinétion. It can 
hardly be doubted, therefore, that the figure is really Daphne; and in 
another purely decorative picture, where she raises her hand as hete, 
sprigs of laurel sprout from her hair (the semblance of this in our pi€ture 
is misleading). ‘The work is summaty and decorative, but skilfully 
executed : although the typical Pompeian landscape background is some- 
what distressing. 


The main features of an important Hellenistic pi€ture are preserved 


by a mosaic in Malta. The mosaic was once thought to represent 
Samson and Delilah: somewhat unlikely in a work of the early Imperial 
age. The corre& interpretation is given by a passage in Philostratus’ 
descriptions of pictures; the book is a product of the later schools of 
thetoric, but shows considerable acquaintance with art. A satyt, heavy 


114 


OTHER WALL-PAINTINGS 


with wine, falls asleep, and is surprised by two nymphs, who avenge 
themselves on their tormentor by binding his hands and cutting his 
beard off. ‘This may be amusing for us, but it is a serious matter for 
the participants: we must remember the oath by the beard. Hence 
the grandeur of the artistic treatment, almost excessive to our taste ; it 
could not be greater if the bard Thamyras were being blinded by the 
muses : but it is as thoroughly Hellenistic in its way as the subje@t. The 
composition, both in the plane and in space, is based on great diagonals 
and strong contrasts of dire&tion: light and shadow are also sharply 
contrasted. The satyr reminds one vividly of Laocoon. Mote attractive 
ate two pictures of lovers. One is a peculiar treatment of a common 
subject, Selene and Endymion, The youthful hunter is usually repre- Fig. 132 
sented leaning on his rocky seat in an attitude which suggests rather 
than renders sleep: the moon-goddess steals or hovers towards him, 
sometimes enveloped in ghostly silvery vapour. In our pi€ture Endymion 
is awake and waiting for the goddess, who is floating down to him. 
His dog turns round to look at her, and in the middle distance there is 
a charming group of two nymphs in each other’s arms, turning their 
eyes from each other to watch the lovers. They are not essential to the 
pidure, but ate so appropriate that one would like to think of them as 
invented for it. The upper part of Selene’s body in its gauzy chiton 
shines yellowish out of the purplish black mantle like the half-veiled 
moon from a dark cloud: an example of landscape anthropomorphism 
in colouring. The composition, both in the plane and in space, is 
apparently simple, but constructed and balanced, with studied art, in 
diagonals and counter-diagonals, verticals and horizontals. The credi- 
bility of the representation rests in great measure on the empty space in 
the middle, with its moonshine haze. 

Finally, a work of a very special kind, the charming pi€ture of the Fig. 133 
lovers with the nest of Loves, a true Hellenistic idyll, which we under- 
Stand without names. ‘The replicas are very like one another, and are 
ptobably fairly accurate transcripts of the original. The piéure speaks 
for itself and hardly requires analysis: we shall only draw attention once 
mote to the pairing of the heads; and to the resemblance between the 
youth and representations of Narcissus, Cyparissus and Endymion. Such 
plump, quite unathletic forms can often be observed in big boys in 
the South. The youthfulness of the boy and the girl is not accidental ; 
it is first love rendered in all the charm of its natural innocence. 

From these delightful pastoral idylls we return in the two next 
pictures to the heights of tragic grandeur. One is almost certainly, the 


115 


MEDEA 


Figs. 134- other presumably, a copy after the last of Hellenistic painters, Timomachos 
136 of Byzantium, a contemporaty of Caesar, and highly praised by Pliny. 
His most celebrated work was a Medea which he did not live to complete : 
we suppose it to have been the original of a number of wall-pi@ures, 
gems, reliefs and statuary groups. The best of the pictures comes from 
Fig. 134 Herculaneum. Medea stands frontal, and the folds of the chiton over 
her right leg fall to the ground in rigid verticals. But a double move- 
ment can be felt in the figure: a Step to the left towards her children 
(who are not preserved in this pi@ure); this is also the dite@ion in 
which she is looking, with her eyes fixed on the ground; and a twist 
of the shoulders to the tight, as if she would turn away. The same 
contest appeats in the countenance: tage struggles with grief; from 
the half-open mouth with the upper lip drawn up we hear the groaning 
of the tortured breast ; we seem to feel the quick breathing of the excite- 
ment which presses half-blindly towards a decision, and in the fury of 
the wide-open eyes and the agony of the drawn brows thete is a battle 
which we know to be between jealousy and a mother’s love. The 
passions are still equally matched, and in the tightly clasped hands 
with the thumbs pressed together the tension is closed as it were 
in a fing: but we feel the imminence of the explosion which 
will burst the ring: it is not for nothing that the sword-hilt rests in 
these hands. 

This is all expressed by simple, large means. One of them is the 
shatp compression of the body by the twisted mantle: it strengthens the 
impression of painful constri@ion, and forms a contrast to the classic 
plainness of the vertical folds. But this is nothing to the great contrast 
which pervaded the complete pi€ture: the murderous, agonised mother, 

Fig. 135 and the unconscious children at play. A piure from Pompeii, the 
essentials of which recur on two gems, gives the most expressive version ‘= 
of the children: they ate playing with knucklebones on a domestic " 
altar—the altar on which they will be sactificed. The background of es, 
the piéture from Herculaneum seems to have been of typical simplicity : 
a wall with a dark side, and a door opening in it half behind Medea : : 
nothing diverted the eye from the principal figure. | 

Fig.136 Now comes a grand picture of Iphigenia in Tauris with Orestes, 
Pylades and Thoas. Many as are the variations in the treatment of this 
subject in pictures, reliefs and gems, with and without Thoas, before and 
after the recognition, it all comes down to one important picture, and an 
echo of another: traces of a third are uncertain. The typology, as we 
learn from South Italian vase-painting, goes back to the fourth century. 


116 


: 
} 


ORESTES IN TAURIS 


That the picture just mentioned was the work of Timomachos known to 
us from literature is quite possible, not improbable, but not proved. 

Our pi@ute comes from the House of the Citharist at Pompeii. There 
ate sevetal replicas belonging to the same period, but this is the only 
one which is both well preserved and of high artistic merit. The essential 
features recur, cheapened in places, on sarcophagi: this agreement alone 
should have deterred those critics who have pronounced the pi€ture a 
patchwork. ‘The captives stand at the altar, bound, and guarded by a 
Scythian in a Persian cap. Opposite them sits: Thoas with his hands 
crossed on his staff, and gazes at them intently with his head raised : 
his head is set off by the light cloak of the guard who stands behind him 
and also looks at the prisoners. The group of the two prisoners, admit- 
ably compaé both in space and in contour, is a masterpiece of characterisa- 
tion by contrast; the much-tried Orestes half-tresigned, and without 
hope, the resourceful Pylades proud and defiant and attached to life. 
His eyes scan the distance where he longs to be. The guard is made 
little of compared with the prisoners: his speats are balanced by those 
of the King’s attendant and by a tree behind him. In the middle distance, 
on the steps of the temple with a curtain behind her, Iphigenia appears, 
above the broad gap between the groups, which contains the altar with 
a totch and the hydria with the lustral water. She walks forward quietly 
with the image in her arm, and turns her head towards the captives : 
we feel the secret understanding and also the rising suspicions of Thoas. 
The upright spears and the tree connect her with the side groups: in 
the original she was perhaps somewhat lower, but hardly on the ground- 
level, nor can she have held a torch: the sculptors of the sarcophagi 
made these alterations under compulsion. For the spirit of the pifture 
is ruined if the effe& of tension between the two groups is destroyed by 
the insertion of Iphigenia. 

Thoas does not appear in the earlier treatments of the subje@. It 
is only the Thoas picture from the Casa del Citarista and its replicas 
which ptesent us with a convincing masterpiece, the figures and groups 
of which found their way into all the other classes of Campanian art. 
And the only Iphigenia in Tauris we hear of is by Timomachos. This 
may be a coincidence, and the picture is conceivable in any period from 
the later fourth century onwatds. But the conjecture that it is really 
by the master of strong but restrained expression is inherently probable. 
Compared with the violent outburst of pathos in the Farnese Bull or the 
Laocoon, the psychological tension of these pi€tures almost reminds us of 
fifth-century ethos. This does not mean that they are classicising works, 


117 


(Fig. 159) 


Figs. 137- 
138 


VILLA OF BOSCOREALE 


but there is something of classical grandeur in them. ‘Thus the Iphigenia, 
like the Medea, may be the work of the master who had the whole of 
Greek painting to look back on. For us he is its last great master. 

The mural pi&ures and the mosaics hitherto considered have all been 
under the spell of panel-painting. Free mural paintings of gtand Style 
have been preserved in the rooms of the Villa of Boscoreale and the 
Villa Item near Pompeii. Together with the Odyssean landscapes from 
the Esquiline, they constitute the earliest group of wall-paintings in our 
collection, and are not later than the first centuty before Christ. The 
Boscoreale pictures ate set in a framework of painted pseudo-atchite@ture 
and stand like statuary groups on a podium which at the same time sup- 
ports pilasters thought of as projecting: in front of all this thete is a 
tow of columns, with architrave, cotresponding to the pilasters ; behind 
this the wall appears to recede. ‘Thanks to this framework of columns, 
pillats, architrave and base-profile, a painful panorama-like effect is 
avoided, and the colouring raises the work entirely into the ideal sphere 
of artistic irreality. The finely attuned colours of the figures have a 
background of glowing scarlet, against which the columns ¢tand out 
in bright ivory colour and the architrave in golden yellow.- Only five 
of the nine pictures in the room remain. ‘The interpretation of them is 
disputed: the subje€&ts were no doubt influenced by petsonal matters, 
and so cannot be divined by us. 

It is more essential to recognise that these ate works of extraordinary 
importance. There is nothing classicising and nothing degenerate about 
them. ‘They are not survivals of Hellenistic monumental painting ; they 
are that art itself at the height of its power, swelling with the vigour — 
of Pergamene sculpture, murmurous with its fulness, and animated by 
its pulse. Even if they were copies, even if the man on the gold and 
ivoty throne were an Attalid or a Macedonian and the lady his queen, 
one has the feeling that they would be copies by a painter of the same 
school, a painter who was speaking not a foreign language but his 
own. The ‘ broad, pictorial handling with its rich contrasts ’ has rightly 
been admired: with perfe& mastery bright heights are contrasted with 
gloomy depths, broad surfaces with deep furrows, the large quiet of the 
principal forms with the passionate movement of the minor ones, the 
powerful masses with the abundant articulation. As the reétless light 
ripples and glistens over the massive body of the man, its planes, lines 
and contours vibrate in violent, often breathless cutves, the folds of the 
drapery break, swerve and halt, the surface of the material bunches 
and crinkles. The life which is embodied in these Stylistic forms is a 


118 


VILLA ITEM 


full-blooded southern life. These big, ample figures with their grandiose 
nonchalance of bearing we seem to have met in South Italy. They do 

not parade themselves before us, but sit and stand on the podium in 
unconstrained attitudes, sometimes in an almost frontal three-quarter 

view, sometimes, with an effective contrast, in pure profile. The paired 
figures turn their heads towards each other, the maiden and her servant 

look at us. ‘The inaccurate perspective of the chairs is instru@tive. In 

the man’s chair we have an inadvertence which the painter doubtless 
noticed, but could no longer correct: but in the girl’s chair also there 

is No question of mathematical correctness. The ancients knew the rules 

of perspective, but their use of them in art was always a matter of feeling. 

The decoration of the Villa Item is of a different kind. Our pictures Figs. 140- 

give specimens only: but we must say a word about the decoration ‘4? 

as a whole, for although it is distributed over three walls and subdivided 

into a number of groups, yet it is composed as a unit, so that the eye 

glides past the corners without difficulty. Accordingly there is no 
pseudo-architecture : the podium supports the figures and nothing else, 

and behind them there is only flat panelling. Here also the principal 

fields of the wall are scarlet, so that the subtly coloured figures give 

us the same impression of apparent irreality as at Boscoreale. The 

large fields are separated by narrow pilaster-like interspaces, and this 
wall-rhythm is taken up into the figure-composition. The interpreta- 

tion is disputed: the simplest view is probably the best, that the subject 

is the ceremonies of Dionysiac consecration in the presence of the god 

and his followers. The general atmosphere is quiet, with little action 

ot movement. ‘The god leaning at his ease on the breast of Ariadne, 
Silenus giving a satyr drink, behind them another satyr holding up a Fig. 141 
mask, and, in the spirit of a country idyll, two young satyr-girls sitting 

on rocks, one with a Pan-pipe, another suckling a roebuck ; in front 

of her a she-goat. This group enhances by contrast the effect of the 

most animated of all the figures, an ecstatic maenad; more calm, but 

he also full of the god, a second Silenus plays the cithara beside her. 

Then come women quietly preparing the sacrifice, and last two women Fig. 140 
with a boy who is reading in a scroll, no doubt a sacred writing. He is 

taken to be Iacchus with his divine nurses, but he may be only a young 
initiate. The chief ceremony takes place at the other extremity of the 
picture. A girl kneels at the feet of Ariadne and lifts the cloth from the 

sacted symbols in the winnowing-basket. The sight of the crude 
emblem of the power of nature rouses terror and aversion: one dainty Fig. 142 
maiden has fled to the lap of an older friend, another starts back, and a 


119 


VILLA ITEM 


winged goddess, wearing, like Iris, short clothes and shoes, with averted 
face and a gesture of abhorrence lifts a rod to strike the kneeling girl. 
Who the goddess is, Aidos, Dike, Iris, we cannot tell, but the main idea of 
the scene is known from clay reliefs and gems. There we see a winged 
maiden, dressed in long clothes, fleeing away. Here she is as it were 
split up into two figures, and the expression of abhorrence is increased 
to one of divine interference: we feel as if a spiritualisation of the rude 
cult of nature were here indicated. The scene is closed by a naked 
woman dancing and playing the cymbals, and a draped woman with a 
thyrsus. ‘There may be special meanings concealed here and there, but 
the general sense of the pi€ture seems clear. 

Since we ate obliged to restri& ourselves to extraéts, we shall not 
analyse the composition, but only refer to the solution of the corner- 
ptoblem. The figures never come close up to the corner, but touch it 
at most with a wing or a foot. Yet the connexion between one wall and 
the next is always cleat: two heads are turned towards one another, 
and the subjeét-connexion is so obvious as to have led to the erroneous 
view that the winged goddess is beating the girl who has taken refuge 
with her friend and whose body has been bared by her violent move- 
ment. This would be impossible even if they were on the same wall. 
In the several parts of his pi€ture the painter has made use of a variety 
of well-known types, but the whole work is so well adapted to the 
particular requirements of the space, and so thoroughly homogeneous, 
that we cannot think of it as an ordinary copy after a famous original. 
We can see that the stream of Hellenistic art has not yet dried up, and 
we observe the influence of a magnificent art of monumental painting 
and a copious Store of types: but exaétly how this particular work 
otiginated we cannot tell. 

We have already spoken about the spirit of the pi@tures. ‘The figures 
ate subtly individualised, and the rendering of the various shades of 
feeling and degrees of excitement is no less subtle. Motives and tteat- 
ment of form are decidedly Hellenistic, and not very early Hellenistic : 
that is shown by the proportions—the upper part of the female body is 
often very slender—by the individual faces, and above all by the style 
of the drapery. The most striking chara@eristics of the drapery are large, 
light, uniform surfaces with sharp fold-lines and heavy shadows; and 
there is a good deal of naturalistic observation. But that is not the 
whole story, and in particular it takes no account of the essential difference 
between these pi€tures and the kindred works from Boscoreale. In 
those we found a full-blooded Hellenistic style, strongly recalling Pergamene 


I20 


* 

- 

: 

“4 
2 
[- oi 
. 

‘ 


ALDOBRANDINI WEDDING 


sculpture of the second century: here we have another ingredient, 
classicisation. The heavy vertical folds of the woman beside the reading Figs. 140- 
boy, the delicate folds of the ecstatic maenad’s chiton, which fall between 14! 
the legs in the same dense parallels as in the Florence versions of the 
Niobid group, and in the upper part of the body radiate from the breasts 
with remarkable regularity, and finally the general tendency to sharp, 
natrow fold-edges and regular lines—these things and the like lie like 
a classicising veil over the Hellenistic life of the drapery. The whole 
rendering of form has something of this slightly academic coolness. A 
linear, plastic element contends with the pictorial. The pictorial element 
is less noticeable in the style than in the technique: at times, in the bodies Fig. 142 
of the naked girls, for instance, it seems quite ousted, and the easy, broad 
handling has given way to a laborious draughtsman-like manipulation of 
the brush. But all these considerations recede into the background 
when we experience the effect of the composition as a whole. If we 
abandon ourselves without prejudice to the impression produced by a 
work which does not aim at being more than mural decoration, we 
feel more strongly than through any critical analysis the spiritual wealth 
and monumental grandeur of the lost art of which it is a last continuation. 
We now come to the celebrated Aldobrandini Wedding, copied or Fig. 139 
described by Rubens and Goethe, Van Dyck and Poussin. In its present 
State the frieze is about eight feet long. The date is about the time of 
the birth of Christ. The essentials of the picture are easily grasped: 
but the details present difficulties which increase rather than diminish 
as time goeson. We see before us the final customs at a Greek wedding, 
transfigured by Greek imagination, which here, as five centuries earlier, 
sets man and god together side by side—mortals in the solemn festal 
mood, and friendly participating deities: unless, indeed, it is a half- 
human tendering of the divine wedding of Herakles. The bride sits 
on the nuptial couch, muffled up and leaning back a little on to the 
cushions. She looks down, shy, anxious and very serious, hardly able 
to heed the friendly words of a goddess who sits beside her. The 
goddess is naked from the waist upwards, and will therefore be Peitho 
ot Aphrodite. She has her right arm round the bride’s neck, and speaks 
to her low, but with an urgent southern gesture. In front of the head 
of the couch, with his back half-turned to the pair, a youth, wreathed 
and almost naked, sits on a low threshold and turns his head with the 
eyes raised towards the bride. He is probably Hymenaeus, for neither 
his aspect nor his attitude is that of a bridegroom: and this is also against 
his being Herakles. On the other side of the pair a second half-clad 


Q 121 


ALDOBRANDINI WEDDING 


goddess, Charis perhaps or Peitho, leans on a low column, and pouts 
oil from a perfume-pot into a shell. On the left, turned away from 
these, is a putely human group: the bride’s mother preparing the 
usual. foot-bath with the assistance of two little handmaidens: the 
basin stands on a short column: she tries the temperature of the water 
with the back of her hand, while one of the handmaids shakes some- 
thing into it. A towel hangs from the column, and a flat dish leans 
against it below. Behind, half-concealed, the other handmaid holds a 
larger object, perhaps a water-vessel misunderstood. The group on the 
tight side is looser. Three maidens are standing at a graceful metal 
lavet. ‘The left-hand figure is shaking something into it, presumably 
incense; the right-hand one leans back and strikes the lyre which hangs 
from her shoulder; and the middle one, who is distinguished by a high 
crown of leaves, stands still as if she were about to sing to the lyre: the 
wedding song at the threshold of the bridal chamber into which the 
bridegroom is soon to pass. ‘This is all perfectly intelligible, and one 
who is accustomed to the indication of archite€ture in vase-painting will 
hardly ask how the rendering of space is to be understood: the receding 
and projecting pillars and walls in the background give us the feeling 
of open air on the right, of the thalamos in the middle with Hymenaeus 
sitting on the threshold, and of an adjoining room on the left. 

The expression of the picture makes a dire&t appeal to us: simple — 
humanity, from the deep emotion of the bride to the quiet matter-of- 
faétness of the women who perform the sacred rites; and human faith 
and feeling embodied in the deities of the marriage sacrament. What- 
evet the scene was which originally continued the pi&ure on the left, 
it cannot have been out of keeping with this atmosphere: unless, of 
course, it was an independent scene. Our uncertainty becomes more 
setious when we turn to the question of composition, but here also we 
may say that what remains forms a unity, whether within a much greater 
whole or not, which does not admit of more than a slight extension : 
the symmetrical rhythm of the broad, central group between two side- 
groups turning away from it is too strong for that, and the symmetty 
is heightened by the stronger colouring in the middle. As the original 
termination of the piCture on the left is preserved, the expression value 
of the turning away cannot be doubtful: it means that the bride is left 
entirely to her own emotion and the divine powers. Gentle womanhood 
is still busied about her; but soon it will be the turn of Hymenaeus, 
who looks up at her with shining eyes, and makes us remember that 
soon, after the mother and the maidens, the bridegroom will be at the 


ray 4 


PORTRAIT-PAINTING 


door. In this sense we can feel in Hymenaeus the impatience of the 
waiting bridegroom. 

Artistically the composition, with its quiet perspective and the flat 
chataéter of its rhythm, makes a good frieze-pi€ture, and the effect of the 
colours, with their uniform general tone, is as pleasant as it is unobtrusively 
decorative. ‘The technique, which strews isolated light and dark strokes 
and dots over the fundamental middle tones, and thereby achieves ‘a 
loose pictorial rendering of form and a total effect of great liveliness and 
freshness’; the colouring; the principles of composition, and the 
motives: all these are inherited from a highly accomplished art. It 
has often been concluded that the work is a copy of some important 
classical or Hellenistic picture. But the conclusion is by no means 
binding ; on the contrary, it is open to grave objections. ‘The picture is 
perfe@ly intelligible as an eclectic creation of its own period, and there 
is much to be said for this view. The painter works with traditional 
material, but he handles it with all the skill and power of a fortunate 
inheritor, who has not lost touch with the great past. He never dreamed 
that his picture would be taken for a classical masterpiece, when it was 
after all only a decorative frieze of no great size. Goethe was right : 
he saw in this much-admired work a decorative picture ‘ painted on the 
wall lightly and with light heart,’ in which at most the principal figures 
could have been borrowed from a famous original. But what a happy 
lightness and what a divine light-heartedness in this ‘reliquia di quei 
buoni tempi’! It is not a cold academy, not the work of a petrified 
classicisation, but late Hellenistic art, still vital, though now eclettic 
and a little mechanical. 

We now tutn to a topic which has hitherto received but a passing 
mention, portrait-painting. In the second half of the fourth century, 
in common with the other branches of the art, it reached a height of 
excellence which won it a place in our literary record and which is con- 
firmed by extant sculptures. All that remains is the faintest of echoes 
in the mosaic of the Battle of Alexander. One can still see that Alexander’s (Fig. 121) 
features have not yet been submitted to the idealisation which we know 
from later times. But beyond that, a mosaic copy of a large battle- 
piece from the period after Alexander’s death cannot be expected to teach 
us much about a teal att of portrait-painting distinguished by the highest 
degtee of pictorial and psychological refinement. What is preserved is 
only a late and more or less mechanical descendant of this art: the 
Egyptian mummy-portraits of the Imperial age, from the middle of the Figs. 143- 
first century after Christ onwards. We possess some four hundred of '4® 


paz 


MUMMY-PORTRAITS 


them, ranging in a long series from the flourishing Hellenistic art of 
the first two centuries down to Coptic art. They are naturally unequal 
in artistic value, and the worst of them are primitive daubs; but the 
best reach a level which for late provincial works like these is surprisingly 
high, and explicable only by the incomparable tenacity of Greek tradition 
in style and in handicraft. 

Most of our mummy pidtures come from the Fayum, a rich disti@ 
in Middle Egypt which was systematically colonised by the Ptolemies. 
Their preservation is due to a curious combination of pute Greek art 

Fig. 148 and Egyptian funerary customs. Our last pi@ture shows the top of a 
mummy wrapper. The wrappings are arranged to make a frame for the 
portrait, which thus takes the place of the old Egyptian mask. The 
picture could also be painted on the linen of the envelope itself, and this 
was the origin of the full-length figures painted on later mummy cloths. 

Fig. 143 Our first reproduction is of a pi@ure painted in tempera on linen: but 
the piétures are usually made of thin boards, painted either in tempera, 
or in encaustic, or in a mixture of both. Encaustic is the Greek equivalent 
of our oil-painting : wax was used as the binding medium instead of 
oil; the colours were either laid on solid with the hot- spatula, or 
liquid with the brush. It is to this technique, which is far the com- 
monest, that the portraits owe their luminousness, their lustre, and the 
silky sheen on the noble colours, beside the special pictorial effeéts 
obtained by the pastel-like juxtaposition of separate touches of colour. 
This juxtaposition was a dire& invitation to decompose the colours into 
contrast-values, the union of which on the retina of the speCtator so _ 
greatly strengthens the effe@. Similarly the old device of hatching, =" 
familiar to the vase-painters of the ripe archaic period, is used on the of 
best tempera pictures: at the same time it served a lineat purpose, the 4 
modelling of the form by means of surface-lines. At a distance of six a 
feet the device disappears and the effe@ alone remains. ‘The technique 
of this late provincial art thus shows complete command of the resources 
inherited from a great art of painting which in essentials was not inferior 


to the modern. a 

The portraits on wood, as we know from unmistakable signs, were = 
not painted specially for the mummies but in the lifetime of the sittee 7 = oy 
They were framed with crossing spars and hung on the wall by cords. ae 


Such pictures could naturally be copied for the mummy, but usually the é 
original itself was used, and merely adapted to the narrow, low mummy a 
window by splitting off the edges: for the mummy remained in the ee 
house as long as the family valued its Presence. It stood upright against 2 ; 


124 


MUMMY-PORTRAITS 


the wall, and the piture thus showed very much as it had when hanging 
up. The trimming of the edges is a sensible loss: for the relation 
between image and background and between head and shoulders, the 
outline, and with it the general attitude, have suffered. This is more 
serious than might seem at first glance. For in spite of the mechanical 
simplification these pictures preserve the tradition of a great art of por- 
traiture, which produced eloquent effeéts by the simplest means, with 
a few strokes and slight modifications. The head, which usually looks 
at the spectator or at any rate close past him, was never given more than 
a very slight turn in the direétion of the three-quarter: but this was 
made up for by a lively movement in the bust, and even, where the lines 
pass into each other, a strong rhythm: the shoulders slant well away, 
so that symmetty is excluded, and the head sits on the neck with more 
ot less of a turn, and therefore with a bend. Thus an animated play 
of line was produced, and the direé&t impression of aétual life: for the 
spectator feels as if the sitter had just turned to look at him. 

With this slight, at times hardly noticeable, movement in the pose, 
these persons ate presented to us in the quiet immutability of their 
being and are yet at the same time brought into immediate relation 
with us by their look: the enduring existence and the life of the moment 
are combined in the simplest fashion. ‘The individual chara¢terisation is 
not impaired by the prevailing similarity of pose: on the contrary, a 
very slight modification suffices, in conjunction with the features and the 
facial expression, to produce a highly individual effect. Slightly raised 
or slightly sunk, gently bent or stiffly erect, the difference may only be 
a few millimetres, and yet the expression will be utterly changed. The 
same tutn of the neck gives the full-blooded, short-necked man a look of Figs. 143, 
violence, and the long-necked, narrow-headed man a look of aristocratic 145 
indolence. So also in the facial features: the type of head may remain 
the same—the same shape, the same arrangement of the parts; and yet 
the expression may be most individual, and it is not only mediocre 
painters who have a ‘ type’ of their own. 

Having laid down this principle, we must proceed to restrict it: for 
it does not apply universally, and to the majority of the best portraits 
it does not apply at all. They show a power of grasping individuality 
which is not limited by any system of types, but only purified by an eye 
fixed on essentials. A feature which we are tired of hearing described 
as a characteristic of the whole species is not even true of the average : 
the alleged unnatural or at least racial largeness of the eyes. The catch- 
word is more applicable to the portraits of the first half of the nineteenth 


125 


MUMMY-PORTRAITS 


century than to the mummy portraits, even in spite of the remarkable, 
even astonishing, size of the eyes in many Greeks of to-day. ‘There is 
the same relation between art and nature in the regularity of the contour 
of the face and of the eyebrows: the artistic type is the racial beauty 
of the south transfigured. In bad and mediocre painters we recognise 
the formula to which everything is reduced; in good painters we do not 
know how much to believe. Conversely, not every striking irregularity 
is to be accepted as true to nature, for even in good pictures the irregularity 
is sometimes seen to be due to misdrawing. 

Such considerations are almost unavoidable in dealing with what is 
after all, in the main, the work of artisans; but they do not affe& the 
essential point—the unerring combination of piorial effe@ with indi- 
vidual expression. In this respe@ the average is extraordinarily high, 
and makes us realise what we have lost in the portraits by the great 
masters: for even the best of the mummy-pottraits, we may be sute, 
could not compate with them for a moment. Throughout we find 
the tradition of a great art, but nowhere the hand of a creative master. 

Fg. 143 We begin our closer consideration with a fine portrait which shows 
no trace of superficial conformity to type, but only what we find in all 
mature Greek art—a simple, large manner of seeing things and shaping 
them. The head cannot be later than the first century, and is an astonishing 
piece of painting. Face and neck and no mote ate visible, but we cannot 
help imagining that we see a powerful skull and broad shoulders as 
well, and we immediately think of this strong, full-blooded man as a 
Roman: the type is still common in Italy and Southern France. The 
head is painted in glowing colours with a broad brush and a sure hand. 
The face, already slightly wrinkled, with the skin not quite taut in places, 
is modelled completely in the flesh-tones; the forehead wrinkles, how- 
ever, ate drawn with a few swift strokes of the pointed brush, and 
similarly the bright light on the temple is toned down by ted hatching. 
Here and in the depths of the furrows the flesh colour is already decom- 
posed into bluish-red and yellowish-green, between which there is a 
purer yellow, especially in the strongest lights. ‘The gteenish tones ate 
most pronounced in the shaved parts, but are just as strong, though in 
smaller patches, elsewhere. ‘The light comes from the left upper cornet, 
and models the eyes, nose and chin powerfully and clearly; strong 
shadows and bright lights, dashed in with firm brush-strokes, stand side 
by side without transitions. ‘The head stands out well from the yellowish- 
gtey to bluish-grey background: it is dominated by the dark eyes, 
which arrest our gaze, and the swelling red mouth; their effe& is 


126 


MUMMY-PORTRAITS 


enhanced by the cursory treatment of the eats. ‘The artist has seen the 
head both completely pictorially and completely plastically. ‘That is 
Greek impressionism. 

The other coloured reproduction gives a brilliant specimen of the Fig. 144 
encaustic technique. A young woman of a pronounced Greek type 
and a somewhat animal-like, vegetative kind of beauty, looks at us 
with the quiet assurance of her simple large forms. The tone-values 
tange from the whitish-yellow high-lights to the deep, dark brown of 
hair and eyes. Between these extremes we have the contrasts of the 
lilac purple of the garment, tempered to a rosier tint in the complexion, 
and light yellow, strengthened so as to glow and lighten in the jewels. 

The bluish-grey background gives the proper foil. The pi€ture is not 

very individual, much less soulful: but the characterisation of the type 

is all the purer for that: it is the handsome Levantine of our own time. 
Doubly typical is the narrow, well-bred Greek head with the subse- Fig. 145 
quently added funeral wreath: typical both of the race and of the artistic 
treatment of the racial type. The male head with the fuzzy hair is Fig. 146 
on the same lines, but produces a more individual effect. Both these 

heads ate masterpieces of encaustic. The next pifture is superior to Fig. 147 
both: the suffering countenance of an uncomely middle-aged woman 

with kind eyes, perhaps a Jewess. The tight lips seem to say that she 

has learned to suffer without complaining. Smooth, parted hair, no 
ornaments ; a sharp furrow in the leanish neck. The portrait is painted 

in a large, powerful manner with complete command of the encaustic 
technique. The pictorial expression is not inferior to the spiritual, 
which compels, as has been said, our ptofoundest sympathy. Has the 
painter simplified some of the essential forms, the eyes, for instance ? 

We cannot say for certain, but we should be unwilling to believe that 

this woman looked appreciably different from her portrait. 

A charming pottrait of a child presents a strong contrast. The picture, Fig. 148 
which is in tempera, has darkened unevenly, so that it looks better in a 
photograph than in a colouted reproduétion. It represents a little girl 
with a mop of fair hair and big brown innocent eyes in a charming face 
with delicate nose and small cherry mouth. She might be the child 
of a Celt or a German: from the Ptolemaic time onwards many fair 
northerners found their way to the far south. 

At last we come to the most characteristic branches of Hellenistic 
painting : the pi@ture of mannets, the animal-piece, the still-life, and the 
landscape. Here also we can trace certain strands of connexion with Figs. 149- 
the classical painting of the fourth century, in the long run even with 16° 


127 


HELLENISTIC PAINTING : THE PICTURE OF MANNERS | 


archaic att, but these species did not become fully developed until 
Hellenistic times. They are among the most charateristic produés of 
Hellenistic art, not only in themselves but also by contrast with the 
ideal species of art both old and new: one of the many contrasts which 
we observe in this restless, turbulent age with the wide pendulum swing 
in its attitude towards the self and to the world. With the pi@ure of 
mannets the cabinet picture comes in—the piture which has no specific 
destination, is not a dedication to the gods or a monument to the dead 
but merely a pleasant ornament in the house. In the wall-painting 
of the first century before Christ, which imitates the a€tual plastic archi- 
tecture of a wall, there are reproductions of such piftures together with 
the ledges on which they stood. The first painter whom we know to 
have painted such piétures worked in the second half of the fourth 
century, but stands on the threshold of Hellenistic art. This was Apelles’ 
rival, Antiphilos, an Egyptian Greek who played a part at the court of 
the Ptolemies. His manysidedness makes him a precursor of the Hellen- : 
istic age: but the most striking feature of his work is the combination 
of genre subjects with problems of pure painting, a combination familiar 
to us from the Dutchmen. Eyes which see things in terms of pure 
painting need not wander in search of important and interesting subjeéts. 
Everyday life offers sufficient material to engross their attention, and the 
sense of the objective charm of the world around us is thereby quickened. 
The same thing took place in pure painting at the turn to Hellenistic 
art as had taken place in drawing at the end of the archaic period, when 
artistic problems had led the red-figure painters to take an interest in 
everyday life. 

Antiphilos seems to have been a painter of large pi€tures, but Peiraikos, 
mentioned in our literary tradition as the chief representative of genre 
painting and still-life, appears to have been a thorough ‘little master,’ 
like so many Dutchmen. He painted barbers’ shops, cobblers’ booths, 
donkeys, food, and his pictures fetched huge prices in later times. Kalates, 
we hear, painted small scenes from comedy, and the mosaicist Dioskourides 

(Figs. 150- has left us very expressive examples of such scenes. One of his two 
51) mosaics, the masked mettagyrtai or mendicant musicians of the Mother 
of the Gods, seems to be taken from real life rather than from the Stage. 
In this work we have the three essential properties of the species, found 
also in the Dutchmen: the keenness of perception which, because of 
its desire for absolute truth to life, delights in plebeian coarseness, even 
plebeian ugliness and vulgarity ; the consequent magic power of making 
us join in the experience, which Burckhardt found in the Dutchmen 


128 


THE PICTURE OF MANNERS: DIOSKOURIDES 


and which seemed to him to constitute theit essential charm ; and lastly, 
the consummate excellence of the purely pictorial side. The essential 
features of genre painting are therefore the same in Greece as in modern 
times: but we must not forget that Greek genre painting had a much 
smaller range. Classical feeling tended to keep it down, and also invented 
playful kinds of idealism which ran parallel to it: everyday incidents, 
and even the brutal contests of the Roman arena, were transferred to the 
blithe, innocent world of baby Erotes, or caricatured with grotesque 
dwarves. 

The Pygmy pictures stand to the pi€ures of Erotes much as the 
realistic picture of manners to the mythological idyll. The realistic picture 
and the idyllic are merely different manifestations of the same tendency. 
Civilisation has grown old and over-tefined, and the search for nature 
and prfimitive simplicity leads men in all directions, into the low life 
of the populace as well as into the airy realm of fancy and imagination : 
it is the old parallelism of life and myth in a new form. With the appear- 
ance of this tendency and the growth of great cities, the time was ripe 
for the rise of landscape-painting—a modest, decorative, but within 
limits independent landscape-painting. We mention it here by anticipa- 
tion, for the reason that the landscape is always peopled, sometimes 
by shepherds, peasants, fishermen, wayfaters, sometimes by pygmies or 
creatures of legend like Polyphemos and the dainty Galatea. Polyphemos 
Stands up to his waist in the water looking like a young chaw, while 
Galatea flits by on a seahorse out of his reach. The town-dweller smiles 
and thinks of ever so many examples in life. 

We now turn to the two mosaic pictures by Dioskourides of Samos, Figs. 150- 
who lived about the year 100 or in the first century before Christ. His *5' 
works are of the highest technical refinement. This is what he prided 
_ himself on, and what evidently brought him fame, for it is unlikely that 
the pictures are his own invention: both in form and in colour there is 
much in them that is unintelligible or misunderstood: one detail, wrong 
here, is given clearly and correctly not only in a fresco replica, but in a 
terra-cotta figure of the second century B.c. from Asia Minor. We must 
therefore infer 2 common soutce, some famous picture of the third or 
second century. The subtleties of the actual painting were evidently 
beyond the range of the mosaic. technique even at its highest, and 
Dioskourides was compelled to make all sorts of small alterations. The 
condition of the mosaics is far from perfect. In the Metragyrtai the 
damage has been made good, superficially, by rubbing down, polishing 
and filling up. In parts of the other picture, it is only the coloured 


R 129 


ite ATR 
; cee a 
oe ae 


THE PICTURE OF MANNERS: DIOSKOURIDES 


cement cloisons that give the colour of the lost stones, and the tone, 
always paler, seems to have faded further with wear. 

Fig.150 ‘The picture of the Metragyrtai, as it should most probably be called, 
shows us three low-class street musicians wearing small masks, and a 
seedy lad with the oldened look of a dwarf, against a light-coloured wall, 
to the left of which a door is half seen. ‘The incident is rendered with 
convincing direétness. It is just as when in Naples a group of mendicant 
musicians suddenly appears from heaven knows whete, strikes up, and 
maintains from start to finish an animation which seems to take no 
account of the spectator. So these three. ‘The stout tympanon-player, 
dancing up to us, dancing away from us; the cymbal-player bending 
clumsily over and accompanying the rhythm with his whole body; and 
in full contrast the woman playing the flute, upright, with only her 
fingers moving as she plays the melody evenly and colourlessly, The 
peculiarity of the effe& is enhanced by the masks, the features of which, 
pattly animated, partly unmoved, half agree and half confli@ with the 
aspect and actions of the wearers: they vary from the laughing, satyt- 
like mask of the tympanist to the almost classical mask of the flute-player, 
and a double contrast is furnished by the maskless face of the little lad 
with his pined, common features. He is not actually a dwarf, as some 
have supposed, but a neglected guttersnipe, stunted in mind and body: 
hence the oldened look and the dull expression. He is obviously meant 
for a typical spectator of street-scenes. His stupid stare intensifies the 
liveliness of the picture by contrast, and reveals the miserable reality 
concealed behind the masks of the musicians. It is a question whether 
such maskless supers are possible in the New Comedy, for instance 
during the choruses, about which we know vety little. On the other 
hand, the masks do not exclude a Sstreet-scene. Artistically it comes to 
the same. 

The simple composition is finely thought out, but we shall not analyse 
either composition or colouring. But we must draw attention to the 
perfection of the lighting and to the use made of it. ‘The tympanist, 
especially, is bathed in light and worked out with rich chiaroscuro, 
and between his arm and his mask one can really see the shimmer of 
the air, warm, sunny, and saturated with colour. The shadow which 
he casts on the wall is skilfully used to throw up the figure of the cymbal- 
player. The effect is not so strong in the flute-player and her shadow, 
owing to her standing farther back. She is badly disfigured by restora- 
tions in her lower half, which make her look flattened on to the wall 
instead of standing on the ground in front of it. Her original position 


130 


THE PICTURE OF MANNERS : DIOSKOURIDES 


can still be inferred from the dire€tion of her shin, and the wall-pi@ure 
gives confirmation. ‘The lighting is not quite consistent even hete, as 
one can easily see if one looks close: the painter did not regard it as 
an end in itself, but as a means of producing artistic effe€ts and to be used 
as occasion arose. 

The other mosaic, which undoubtedly represents a scene from the Fig. 151 
New Comedy, is subtler, more literary, and perhaps for that very reason 
mote delicate in colour. What scene, contemporaries knew but we do 
not, and hence the appeal is not nearly so dire& as in the Metragyrtai, 
which any one can understand: but in force or even violence of expres- 
sion the comedy-scene leaves nothing to be desited, What is certain 
is that the old woman is one of those pharmakeutriai who dealt in love- 
charms. She and two ladies are sitting round a small table, on which 
we see the sprig of laurel which we know from Theocritus, a box for 
the charms, and a thurible. The squinting hag holds a silver cup, and 
her left hand makes the well-known gesture with bent-up fingers which 
may mean either deliberation or remonstrance. Since, as so often with 
persons who squint, we cannot be certain in which direction she is 
really looking and in which she only appears to be looking, the scene 
is open to several different interpretations. She may be deliberating, 
while her neighbour, with much animation, lays what is evidently a 
difficult case before her. Or the two may be remonstrating with the 
modest little figure at the left extremity of the pifture: but this is less 
likely, for the little servant-girl—a girl she must be from her long clothes 
in spite of her short hair, unless Dioskourides has made a mistake—is 
not sufficiently emphasised. She is even less important, compared with 
the principal figures, than the boy in the Metragyrtai, not only coloristic- 
ally as there, but compositionally as well, since half of her figure is 
cut off, The child cannot be the corpus deli€ti. Her downcast eyes only 
indicate the willing servant. She is probably, like the little boy in con- 
temporaty tomb-reliefs, merely a typical accessory, such as Theocritus 
himself is at pains to introduce. The young lady on the left seems 
deeply embarrassed: probably therefore she is seeking the assistance of 
the old lady, and employing a more experienced friend as go-between. 
The three types are excellently characterised, and once more the masks 
produce their peculiar effec of half-contrast—the rigid type opposed to 
the living person. The quiet little maid serves, like the boy in the 
Mettagyrtai, to heighten the expressiveness of the other figures: the 
atmosphere of the picture is the stronger for her not taking patt. 

The space seems to be treated so as to give a realistic representation 


131 


THE PICTURE OF MANNERS 


of the scene on the stage as viewed from the auditorium. The repre- 
sentation was no doubt clearer in the original than in the mosaic, which 
contains certain obscurities in the figures as well. We look into one 
of those great door-openings on the upper stage, between the pillars of 
which the interior of a room is indicated—indicated in the stylised manner 
of the Greek stage, with no attempt at superficial illusion. In order to 
be visible to all the speétators, the ators sit on a podium of three degrees— 
which is so ornamented that it cannot be mistaken for a stait—framed 
by the pillars like figures in a relief, and with an appropriate background 
behind them: hete it seems to be a light partition-wall, above which, 
and on the left side, we see what is pethaps the dark interior of the Stage- 
building ; if we were looking at it immediately from the front it would 
just fill the width of the wall-opening. ‘The lighting, which comes in 
from the left, is perhaps like that of a real room rather than that of an 
open stage room, in which we can hardly conceive such a strong shadow 
on a raised mask as we see in the ator on the left. The colour-scheme 
is dominated by a light yellow, balanced by some violet. One might 
think of it as appropriate to the delicate conversational tone of the New 

(Fig. 125) Comedy, and perhaps bring to mind the choice little pi@ure of the 
victorious actot with the Menander-like head. 

Fig.149 _ We now come to one of the most delightful creations in the whole 
of wall-painting, from the human as well as from the artistic point of 
view, the so-called Flora, one of those figures which were not part of 
a picture but placed in free decorative fashion on the wall, which here 
forms a light-blue background. Julius Lange says of it: ‘It is a maiden 
in the April of her days ; like a fresh spring morning she wanders through 
the garden to gather flowers in the basket which hangs from her arm. 
One walks slowly when one is plucking flowers like that, looking to one 
side, looking to the other, to see what to choose. She has passed now, 
but there are pictures which one does not forget so easily, especially 
if one is a painter. On she goes, he sees her now from behind, she had 
almost forgotten a tall plant which grows at the edge of the path, but 
now she turns her head a little, stretches her hand out and plucks the 
end off, with thumb and forefinger, carefully ; for she loves the flowets, 
and takes hold of them tenderly. How beautiful the turn of the neck, 
how fresh the outline of the cheek !_ What fine pure shoulders, and how 
light and quiet her walk, while the morning breeze plays with her 
garment!’ Sensitive drawing, light and delicate painting : ‘ of morning 
vapour woven and clear sunlight.’ 

The new Hellenistic feeling for nature manifests itself not only in 


132 


> 6 hat Bot) ae 
i ken a a Pe Dt |e? a, 


HELLENISTIC PAINTING : ANIMAL-PIECES 


landscape painting but in the animal-piece and the still-life. There are 
only slight traces of still-life in earlier times, and significantly enough 
they always consist of man-made things: but these go right back to 
eatly archaic vase-painting. The animal picture, on the other hand, 
has an ample history, if we take the idea in a quite general sense. Archaic 
att is full of animal friezes and animal groups, even to the pedimental 
gtoups of great temples; an assortment of birds was not deemed 
unworthy to decorate the pediment of a Treasury at Olympia ; as sculp- 
tural dedications we know of splendid horses, powerful bulls and 
Myron’s famous cow. ‘There were no doubt pictures of the same kind, 
although we know only the rolling horse of Pauson. But decorative 
animals, usually combined into a strict tectonic scheme, and dedications 
with a special meaning—the winning racehorse, the knight’s charger, 
the sacrificial animal, the stock-beast, or the memorial figure commemorat- 
ing a chance occurrence, like the swimming horse on an early Corinthian 
plaque, and probably Pauson’s horse itself: all these do not postulate 
an artistically free and independent species of painting, the animal-piece 
as we understand it. It may have been prepared, and probably was, in 
earlier painting as fully as in earlier sculpture; and such preparation 
was of course possible in connexion with human representations. But 
a new frame of mind was necessary before it could become a branch 
of art which was an end in itself. The first steps towards the new point 
of view seem to have been taken in the second half of the fourth century ; 
timid steps, it is true, for Nikias can hardly have been an animal painter, 
though some have thought so—Nikias, who insisted upon important 
subjects, battles with many figures for example, and found fault with 
those who painted little birds and flowers. He was probably thinking 
of Pausias, whose flowet-pieces, if we can judge from a mosaic, may have 
included birds. If so, we have at the very outset that introduction of 
living animals which remained characteristic of Greek still-life. 

The Pergamene mosaics of the royal period also represented birds : 
the famous Doves by Sosos, of which we have imitations ; and a Parrot. (Fig. 155) 
But in two Hellenistic mosaics from Pompeii, derived from an original 
which influenced even the gem-engravers, we have a representation of 
a lion which is so magnificently powerful that Nikias would hardly have Fig. 152 
censured it. : 

The lion had always been a weak point in earlier Greek art, which 
knew the Oriental stylisation of the lion—an archaic, decorative stylisation 
in spite of the late Assyrian animal-pieces—but not the lion itself. It 
could not form a classical ideal of the lion as it-did of indigenous animals, 


53 


Fig. 152 


(Figs. 153, 
15 3a) 


ANIMAL-PIECES 


especially the horse. The Attic lions of the fourth century, not least 
the lion of Chaeronea, are thoroughly unreal decorative animals, devoid 
of genuine expression. But then Alexander marched into the realm of 
the lion, and even fought with him as Herakles had fought with him when 
he was still to be found in Greece. The paradises, the enclosed hunting- 
gtounds of the Oriental princes, opened their gates to the Macedonians 
and the Greeks, and at last Greek artists, though never all of them, 
discovered the overwhelming power and majesty of the king of beasts. 

One can hardly imagine a grander animal-piece than the better- 
preserved of the two Pompeian mosaics. Monumental, even highly 
decorative, effe& is combined with an uncanny force of expression and 
fused with it into a masterpiece of art. Petrifying like the gorgoneion— 
the half-human lion-mask of the archaic period—the gigantic head with 
the heaving mane stares so close into our faces that we seem to feel its 
hot breath. The lion is seen almost full-front, so that nearly all we 
sce besides the powerful head is the huge paws and the tail lashing over 
the back. His attitude still suggests the fearful leap with which he 
felled the panther who writhes powerless under his paws, vainly clawing 
and roating and spitting in pain and fury as he looks up at his-conqueror. 
Thete is not a trace of human pathos in the pi€ure. This is the pure 
beast, which stands in such strange and terrifying contrast to the human 
tace, What strengthens the effe& more than anything else is that the 
lion does not look down at the panther, but only keeps it down by the 
pressure of his iron paws. His angry look, which is fixed upon us, 
seems not even to be aware of the victory: there is something of the 
unconscious action of natural forces in that look. . 

Lion and panther fill the greater part of the pi@ure-surface. Three 
spandrils are free at the cornets, just enough for the monumental simplicity 
of the landscape to produce its effe@. Rocky ground with the rather 
artificial-looking slate steps which are not uncommon, a stone or two, 
tufts of grass, and in the distance a small tree, with gtey background— 
ait-coloured if you like—beside it: that is all; and more would have 
been less. 

Equally convincing effeéts, however, can be obtained in a wide 
landscape setting. A magnificent example of that is the Centaur mosaic 
from the Villa of Hadrian, which gives us a peculiar combination of 
imaginary creatures with real beasts of prey carefully observed. It is 
the tragic counterpart to the blithe idyll described by Lucian—the Centaur 
Family of Zeuxis. It is also a landmark in the development of the 
tepresentation of landscape space ; and a masterpiece in its manipulation 


134 


> an ei Pe 2 fa é big * =e 


ANIMAL-PIECES 


of light and shade. LHverything points to its being a copy, and perhaps 
a Hellenistic copy, of a painting belonging to the early rather than the 
late Hellenistic period ; and that the copy is an accurate one may perhaps 
be inferred from the close cortespondence between the Dove mosaic (Fig. 155) 
found in the same place and Pliny’s description of the work by Sosos. 
The tiger, which became known to the Greeks about 300 B.c., may 
thus be used to determine the upper chronological limit. In spite of 
the contrast of subje, and the strong suggestion of depth in the composi- 
tion, the picture has so close an affinity to the work by Zeuxis in its 
general type that there must be some connexion between the two. The 
hypothesis that the Hellenistic master is as it were quoting Zeuxis, but 
at the same time has created an entirely new and independent work, is 
only one, but perhaps the simplest, of several possible explanations. In 
any case the picture, as we have it, is a thoroughly Hellenistic creation. 

A broken rocky landscape, with a few shrubs, rising unevenly away 
from us, broadening towards us into a flat platform and breaking off in 
a kind of step just before the lower edge—the landscape counterpart of 
the usual base-strip. A pair of centaurs have been attacked by wild 
beasts. ‘The centaur has managed to beat his opponent off: behind 
him lies a lion, whose head he has evidently smashed with the block 
of stone which he now raises again: for the centauress lies bleeding 
and as if dead under the paws of a tiger. The tiger turns from his 
precious prey unwillingly, not quite realising his danger, and sees the 
centaur—too late, we may be sure, to avoid the rock which will crush 
him. On a rock in the middle distance stands a panther, roaring but 
not really prepared to spring; he will hardly dare to attack again. 
This interpretation of the events almost reaches the limit of what the 
painter must have had in his mind. The question whether the centauress 
is dead or only unconscious he might not have been able to answer, 
any more than many modern artists when such questions are put to them: 
for it goes beyond the picture. 

The pi€tute is not meant to show more than the triumph of the strong, 
intelligent half-man over the beasts, while the woman, too delicate for 
such contests, succumbs—a tragic spectacle emphasised by all the devices 
of att. The beautiful light-coloured female shows us the whole of her 
woman’s body, whereas the horse-body is strongly foreshortened and 
pattly concealed: blood streams over it where the tiger’s claws lacerate 
the delicate skin. The face, turned earthwards, is wisely concealed by 
the arm. In contrast to the moving helplessness of the female under 
the wild beast’s paws is the strong victorious centaur: but the face of 


135 


ANIMAL-PIECES 


the rugged woodland creature is torn by anguish. So far the picture 
and Greek feeling: the sentimental hope that the couple will be happy 
once more goes beyond both. On the other hand, there is no ground 
for the ugly notion that lion and tiger had been feeding for a while on 
the centauress—she does not look like it—before being surprised by the 
centaur, No, the desert tragedy of which we see the climax develops 
blow on blow. 

The lyric atmosphere and the feeling for nature shown in this pi@ure, 
with its strong contrasts and its subtle interweaving and opposition of 
human and animal character, are no less Hellenistic than the spatial and 
pictorial devices. The composition is based on an equilibrium, both in 
the plane and in space, which though free is confined within simple, 
cleat forms. ‘The pyramidal main group is completed and led on into 
depth by the panther: pairs of almost parallel lines and right-angles 
articulate and connect the figute-groups, which start with the body of 
the centauress, lying in the pi@ure plane, and move obliquely into the 
depth of the picture. The several forms of the landscape follow it like 
an accompaniment, and the total space combines everything into a 
harmony of forms which is not inferior to that of the expression and of 
the lyric atmosphere. Light and shadow ate distributed in skilful alter- 
nation, and their rhythm intertwines with those of the forms and the 
colours. The picture has suffered in parts through injury and restoration. 
Hence the lack of clearness in the background; hence.also the human 

(Fig. 1534) pathos of the tiget’s head, which is completely modern: the genuine 
head, removed because it was damaged, is the head of a teal tiger with 
feline eyes and smooth skull, a spitting beast without false pathos. 

Fig.154 | We pass into another world when we turn to a splendid Hellenistic 
mosaic from Pompeii, with a remarkable throng of fishes and marine 
life. It belongs to a class of mosaic found from Pergamon to Spain: 
the wall-paintings of the kind are relatively unimportant. The very 
best of the mosaics exhibit a curious mixture of two quite different ways 
of looking at things: below, there is a piece of seashore with the surface 
of the sea; above, a multitude of all sorts of fishes and marine creatutes 
as if seen through the panes of an aquarium. This is nothing else but 
a development of an old decorative tradition, which leads from Egyptian 
fayence plates through Laconian black-figute to the Attic and South 
Italian fish-plates: and we actually possess circular mosaics without 
landscape additions. It is extremely doubtful whether panel-pi@ures of 
this kind existed: such representations were probably confined to the 
decorative mosaic technique and the wall-painting which followed in 


136 


wa 


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i 
be 
vias 
i% 
. 
tive 
ae 
is 
+ = 
rae. 
Pe ~“e 
ax 
i’ 
Ne 


HELLENISTIC PAINTING : STILL-LIFE 


its Steps. That the artists could not refrain from inserting the inappro- 
ptiate element of landscape may perhaps be taken as a confirmation: the 
idea is as Hellenistic as the developed mosaic technique itself. The 
pictorial charm of the fish-mosaics is great, and admirably suited to the 
technique. A fish-picture from Praeneste, unfortunately badly injured, 
is one of the most tasteful and splendidly coloured of all mosaics, and 
in this respect even the Pompeian fish-mosaics are worthy to be placed 
beside the lion mosaic. 

The pictures of small animals bring us into the realm of still-life, 
which often includes living animals. We have already made several 
references to the Pergamene Dove mosaic by Sosos, which Pliny describes 
with such clearness that we can recognise imitations of it. The one 
which corresponds exactly to Pliny’s words comes once more from the 
Villa of Hadrian ; another, certainly Hellenistic, with considerable varia- Fig. 155 
tions, from the Pompeian House of the Lion-fight, and a modification 
also from Pompeii: in this the doves sitting on the rim of a polished 
basin are replaced, save one, by parrots; the basin stands on a pedestal, 
and beside the pedestal are a marsh-lynx and some fruit. A parrot 
already appeared in a Pergamene mosaic of the royal period. The dove 
mosaics arte extremely fine work, and have a high value of their own, 
but they no doubt fell short of the original. In the original the shadow 
of the drinking dove’s head tinged the water: this feature is wanting 
in our copies. It is doubtful how far even the Roman copy is an accurate 
reproduction of the original, although it has a better claim than the others 
to count as a real copy made in Imperial times, whereas the Pompeian 
is evidently a free modification from the Hellenistic period. The pictorial 
effect is very complex in both. The sheen of the metal, of the water 
and of the doves’ mother-of-pearl plumage is seized and harmonised 
with all the affe€tion which belongs to an accomplished art of still-life. 
As animal-pieces the pictures are equally good, the shape and chara¢ter 
of the doves being excellently rendered. 

The still-life has a much mote modest past than the animal-pieces. 
The precedence of human representations was still more unfavourable 
to its development. Yet we find a first step towards still-life in Corinthian 
vases: the archaic love of diversity occasionally led to the accessories 
of pictures receiving a kind of autonomy. ‘Thus a small perfume-vase 
is decorated with a group of weapons which, though not yet a picture 
in our sense of the word, is nearer one than the lyres, drinking-horns, 
and the like, which are ranged side by side in the friezes of later vases. 
The Attic red-figure style also supplies a few examples. If Brygos 


s 137 


STILL-LIFE 


paints a helmet and a shield under the handle of a cup, this is only an 
accessory to a figure-reptesentation, but the effect is almost that of a 
substantive picture. Even in the classical period, the spirit of which 
was concerned with far other things, we find one or two ted-figure 
pictures of the same sort: a few weapons or vases, forming a modest, 
inconspicuous decoration. Then come the flowet-pieces of Pausias, 
probably wreaths or festoons rather than free flowet-pieces in our sense 
of the word; and the flowers and little birds censured by Nikias. This 
brings us to the verge of the Hellenistic period, in which we immediately 
find decorative yet symbolical still-lifes of the simplest description : 
athletic gear and weapons, book-boxes, rolls and writing materials, wool- 


_ basket and mirror, fruit, wreaths and fillet, usually hung on large nails, 


Figs. 156- 
157 


are painted or drawn on the walls of tombs or on gravestones. These 
are not real pictures, but only friezes or field-filling. The final step was 
taken by Peiraikos ot some unknown predecessor: a novelty incon- 
ceivable to the classical mind, food as the subject of panel-pi€tures which 
combined realistic and pictorial feeling. This new and thoroughly 
Hellenistic type of picture was called xenion, from the name of the daily 
gift to the guests of a wealthy house, who in the Greek manner did their 
own housekeeping : they were sent cakes and eggs, fruit and vegetables, 
fish and other sea-creatures, game, fowls and small animals, wine and 
drinking-vessels. Real flower-pieces are rare, for the fruit-pieces, though 
frequent, either keep within the limits of the xenion, or represent 
decorative festoons, as in the famous mosaic threshold from the House 
of the Faun. 7 

We cannot always argue from the wall-pi€tures and mosaics to the 
panel-pi@ure. To begin with, their techniques permitted no more than 
an approximation to what was even mote important in this class of 
picture than in any other, the pictorial elaboration of light and colour. 
The elaboration, however, is often astonishingly high, and, what is more, 
in the very parts where the brush seems to be plied with the least effort : 
it shows a tradition of high pi€torial accomplishment. The composition 
in the xenia proper, though not only in those, is often based on an 
attangement in two degrees. This gives a clear view of the objects, 
which are often spaced out well apart: but the painters were not blind 
to the charm of a dense profusion of objets, either in part of the piture 
ot throughout it. The division into two groups is usually justified by 
the presence of a window-seat, a parapet, or the like, with some of the 
objects placed on it, others in front of it. The simple lines and surfaces 
of these architeftural forms provide a quiet background and an effective 


138 


HELLENISTIC PAINTING : LANDSCAPE 


contrast to the variety and irregularity of the representation. Our 
xenion strikes a mean between the extremes in every respect, and is a Fig. 156 
model of Greek clarity and simplicity. The pictorial charm of the 
peach-branch is hardly visible in our monochrome reproduétion, but 

the sparkle and shimmer of the half-filled glass can be made out tolerably 

well, The glass is drawn with the usual inaccuracy of perspective, 
though it must be said that the shapes of ancient glass vessels are hardly 

evet mathematically true and often remarkably lopsided. Even more 
compact is the composition of our flower-piece. Whether a Hellenistic Fig. 157 
original or a Roman copy, the mosaic is a masterpiece of mature painting, 

It is almost inconceivable to what a point the difficulty of the technique 

has been overcome without the character of the technique being obliter- 

ated. One can feel not only the air, but its colour-saturated humidity, 
between the leaves. 

The most characteristic creation of Hellenistic art is landscape-painting. Figs. 158- 
The feeling for nature, and the longing for infinite distances which 160 
overpowered the classical antipathy to the limitless, led it farther beyond 
classical art in this dire€tion than in any other. But here also, such 
wete the limitations of its creative power, it did not create anything 
fundamentally new, but merely developed and liberated one of the 
elements of mature classical painting, without raising it to the position 
of a collateral species of art. Landscape-painting remained fanciful and 
decorative, and was never given a deeper spiritual content. But it served 
Hellenistic art to express its idyllic feeling for nature. 

The foundation of our knowledge and criticism is a late Hellenistic Fig. 159 
work of the first century B.c., the Odyssean landscapes from the Esquiline. 

The upper part of a wall is painted with a series of pillars, and between 
the pillars we seem to look out over a distant landscape with small figures 
in it, always Odysseus and his companions, in a succession of adventures, 
with the names appicted in the old Greek manner. As though from some 
lofty citadel our view sweeps to the horizon of the sea, which shows 
now here, now there, between rocks and mountains—just as in Greece, 
that land of coasts and islands, where we feel cramped if one day in 
Arcadia or Boeotia we cannot find the sea, and greet it with joy if it 
suddenly opens out before us from a high place. A rocky shore of 
clear plastic form and parts, now rising with a gentle slope, now in huge 
masses ; sheer cliffs and rocky pinnacles ; and the impressive outline of 
a turreted castle on a lofty mountain ridge. The vegetation is spatse— 
a little grass, rushes, scrub, an occasional tree, never leafy: here also, 
clarity and beauty of form. In the central picture we see this landscape 


199 


LANDSCAPE 


as it were architecturally crystallised into an elaborate building: there 
is an architectural element in the several natural forms and in the com- 
position as a whole, and this is firmly linked by form and colour to the 
pillar-wall through which we look out at the landscape. 

We now grasp three essential features of the work. It is Greek 
nature, seen with the eyes of a Greek artist, and transformed into mural 
decoration. The greatness and at the same time the limitations of all 
ancient landscape-painting known to us lies in this, that it is completely 
artistic, but also entirely decorative. We must not look either for 
intimate observation of nature, or even for a recognisable reprodu@tion 
of a particular locality, or for the great master’s creative vision of nature, 
Neither in form nor in expression did it receive the same artistic elabora- 
tion as the human figure or the life of the human soul. Plato’s words 
remained true: in landscape Greek art contented itself with an approxi- 
mation, whereas in man and animal it re-thought the thought of the 
creator and embodied the idea. And so men and their works are rarely 
absent from the landscape, and often play so prominent a part that the 
gteat majority of extant ancient landscapes have been described as 
mythological or archite€tural landscapes. And even if nature is for once 
left to itself, it is usually enlivened at least by animals. 

The artist seldom seeks to express solemnity or grandeur; if he 
does, it is because the mythological representation suggests the thought : 
the small figures, which are really only an accessory, thus control the 
landscape. It is true that there are heroic landscapes with vast precipices 
and roaring waterfalls ; but the romantic feeling is almost always softened 
by an idyllic touch : a rustic san@uary shows that there are gods and men 
even here. Of the majority of the pi€ures Quintilian’s di@um holds 
good, that only gentle, sea-laved, lovely places are beautiful. Only once 
or twice do far-off snow-peaks heighten charm by contrast. The sky 
must be glad and cloudless, the sea peaceful, blue and bright. Idyllic 
spots with rustic san@uaries and peaceful farmhouses, wide stretches of 


country full of every kind of building and monument, shining coasts” 


and gentle bays: that is what we find, and everywhere the light fancy 
and grace of Hellenistic art, resting, one might almost think, in pleasant 


places from the struggle and earnestness of life, and from its own gtandeur, 


depth of feeling, and passion. 

The sovereignty of man in the art of the Greeks and in their emotional 
life as a whole prevented the rise of a landscape-painting comparable 
to the modern. We know from literature that the feeling for nature 
gtew stronger in Hellenistic times: but the new sentiment was diffused 


140 


a ~ 
: eh ae 
rr a ee it 


a 
3 
; 


LANDSCAPE 


rather than profound; for it was predominantly the revolt of the old 
simple life with nature against the over-cultivated life of the great city— 
the same feeling which prompted Ptolemy the Second in his marble 
castle to ‘ envy the beggar who down on the dunes by the harbour lay 
Stretched in the sun.’ We have already referred to this when speaking 
of the picture of manners. But neither this nor conta& with the Orient 
and its paradises and pleasure-gardens was sufficient to deepen the relation 
of the Greek to nature as it has been deepened in modern times ; so that 
a landscape-painting might arise comparable in excellence to the finished 
representation of the human figure which had previously been achieved. 
The deeper the Greeks looked into nature, the more their own countenance 
looked back at them from it: nature became animated with daemons 
of human shape. No extant Greek landscape can compare in grandeur 
ot power of expression with the nymph Arcadia in the picture of Telephos : (Fig. 126) 
even the feeling for landscape found its only complete artistic realisation 
in the human form. 

Connected with this anthropomorphism is the aversion to that wild 
and menacing nature which moves us so deeply with its grandeur. It 
did not make the Greek feel the might of creation, nor did he say, ‘ And 
all thy high works are lordly as on the first day.” What he felt in such 
nature was personal hostile powers, evil spirits. He could represent 
them, because he believed in them—the rugged Boreas or the bearish 
mountain-god Helikon: but a wild rocky solitude or the storm-lashed 
sea and raging surf were not fit subjects for representation, and above 
all not a pleasant decoration for a room. In the first of the Odyssean 
pictures the wind-gods are partly veiled in mist, and there is a hint of 
rain: but that has no influence on the landscape as a whole. The 
darkness of the nether world is not very deep, and the beam of light 
falling through its rocky portal is one of the few examples of such effects. 
The only common effect of the kind is one which helps to create the 
sensation of depth, a special tinge of the sky at the horizon, usually 
whitish, occasionally yellowish or reddish. The reddish colour is pre- 
sumably meant to indicate the hues of morning or evening, but even 
here the intention may be merely decorative. 

Let us now examine our reproduction closer. We have the third Fig. 159 
and fourth of the Odyssean pictures before us. To the right of them 
comes the central pi€ture, doubly recognisable as such, for the perspective 
of the pillars diverges from here, and the preponderance of architecture 
distineuishes it from the other pictures. The destruction of the sixth 
makes it difficult to pronounce upon the connexion of the landscapes 


141 


LANDSCAPE 


in the right half of the frieze ; in the left half the connexion strikes one at 
once, for not only does the third piGure overlap into the second and 
fourth, but the first and second form a compositional unit. The pillars 
are included in the composition, not as interruptions but as foils, and at 
the same time they perform the funétion of making the landscape recede 
into the distance by means of overlapping, aerial perspeétive, and colour- 
contrasts. The effec of the pillars seen close is most powerful: they 
ate bright red with golden-yellow capitals, and they stand out Strongly 
from the transverse pillars with their deep reddish-brown shadows ; the 
contrast is heightened in the architrave, which is whitish-yellow in front. 
With this strongly coloured setting of light and dark the pi@ures easily 
acquire the haze of distance in spite of being full, as usual, of pronounced 
contrasts of light and shadow. ‘The scale of colour consists of the 
complementary colours clay-yellow and light blue, and reddish-brown 
and dull green, with a great variety of intermediate tones, which in the 
foreground are mote or less strongly contrasted, but melt into one another 
mote and more as the picture recedes. Lighter and darker pi@utes 
alternate in an easy rhythm, but without destroying the unity of the frieze. 
The three first pictures show us the Laestrygonian coast, which 
teaches into the fourth. Its beetling crags stand opposite the bright and 
gentle shore of the island of Circe, and the destru€tion of a Greek by a 
Laesttygon presents a cruel contrast to the peaceful nymphs on the 
Aeaean strand, The two coasts are separated by a narrow inlet into 
which the ship of Odysseus is sailing. On the right of the third pi@ure 
the bend of a rocky coast leads the eye on towards the horizon, over 
which the sky is as usual at its lightest. To the left a steep ptomontory 
rises in the background. Here we have the chief deviation from Homer, 
for the harbour entrance is some distance off. ‘The artistic reason is 
clear: the painter wanted a wider horizon-line for his effe& of distance, 
He got it by blocking the entrance with a number of ships broadside 
on, over which we look into the distance. The pitute is painted with a 
sute, easy touch and an eye sensitive to colour. The figures bear witness 
to an admirable tradition of handicraft: forms are given in masterly 
fashion by a few fresh brush-strokes, although the scale is comparatively 
large: in smaller pi€tures even more astonishing effects of sheer life 
are obtained. It is as if this last offshoot of the great figure-painting of 
the Greeks were charged to remind us, even in the wide spaces of a 
distant landscape, where the specific importance of Greek art lay. 
Fig.158 | From this mythological landscape we turn to a heroic idyllic land- ; 
scape, the picture of a grotto san@tuary at the foot of huge rocks ; highly a 


142 


LANDSCAPE 


imptessive with the simple grandeur of its composition and with its 
Strong contrasts of light and dark, of architectural regularity and 
irregular natural forms. Above the rocky wall there is a strip of blue 
sky. In front of the entrance to the grotto stand two of those combina- 
tions of a pillar, a column, and an architrave, which are represented 
times without number, here with gables and in pure front-view, but 
usually gableless and set obliquely to assist the perspective effect. Here 
it is only in their spatial arrangement one beyond the other that there 
is an oblique line; this is interse¢ted by the oblique line of the rocks 
at the sides, which are crowned by single figures, on the right a shepherd, 
on the left a statue. The general design thus exhibits a monumental 
symmetty, which the large tree leaning to the left does not destroy 
but only emphasises by contrast. From the left foreground a herds- 
man pushes a goat forward to be sacrificed. ‘They stand out clearly 
from the light-coloured building, and the spatial effect is good. The 
picture is equally successful in form and in expression: the contrast of 
mighty nature and graceful archite@tute is as Hellenistic as the pastoral 
atmosphere. 

The last picture may be called a half-rural, half-architeCtural scene. Fig. 160 
The bucolic idyllic element balances the multifarious buildings with their 
long tows of columns. ‘The details of the picture must not be taken 
too literally: there is a river spanned by a great bridge, but where the 
tiver comes from, and whither it is bound, is a mystery; the relation 
between the bridge and the religious gateway is by no means clear ; 
and so on. But what unprejudiced spectator will not gladly dismiss 
such questions and submit himself to the convincing impression of the 
whole? The great depth of the picture is obtained by the varied and 
delightful disposition of architeCture, natural features and accessories, 
one above or one behind the other: the tall tree in the foreground 
helps to make the picture recede, and the effective arrangement of details 
like cattle on the bridge and the ships in the middle distance serves the 
same putpose. Under the tree shepherds are sacrificing, and in the gate 
we see the hindquarters of a horse, followed by a heavy-laden traveller. 
With this long-famous picture in the home of Winckelmann, the Villa 
Albani, we bring our journey through the thousand years of Greek art 
to a close. 


143 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 


SYSTEMATIC bibliography of vases and monumental paint- 

ing is contained in my Malerei und Zeichnung der Griechen, 

I. pp. 5 ff. and 353 ff.; detailed alphabetical bibliographies 

for both subjeés in Mau, Rea/katalog der Bibliothek des 

Archéologuchen Inftituts in Rom, IL. pp. 109 ff. and 128 ff.; 

for vases only in H. B. Walters, Hatory of Ancient Pottery, London 1905, 

I. pp. xxi ff—a comprehensive revision of the old handbook by Bitch— 

and in S. Reinach, Répertoire des vases peints, Paris 1900, Il. p. 366 f.—an 

indispensable pictorial index to the most important of the older periodicals 

and publications of vases ; it is supplemented for monumental painting 

by his Répertoire des peintures grecques et romaines, Patis 1922, which also 
contains a bibliography. 

The best general account of Greek vases is given by E. Buschor, 
Greek Vase Painting, London 1922, without references to the literature, 
in this and in systematic matters as well as in reproduétions occasionally 
supplemented by the small books M. Herford, A Handbook of Greek Vase 
Painting, Manchester 1919, and Ch. Dugas, La céramique grecque, Patis 
1924, with short bibliography. Fuller, Pottier, (atalogue des vases antiques 
du Lowre, \.-IIl., Paris 1896-1906, supplemented by an album, Vases 
antiques du Lowre, Patis 1897-1922: a fundamental work, the intelle@tual 
fineness of which is unimpaired by its no longer being quite up to date. 
A valuable supplement to this work and to my own is provided by 
P. Ducati, Storia della (eramica Greca, 1922-3, owing to its closer treatment 
of Italian vase-painting. 

The Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum begun by the Union Académique 
Internationale, Paris 1923- , is intended to provide reproduétions of 
all ancient vases. For developed archaic and classical vase-painting the 
handsome and richly illustrated volumes by J. C. Hoppin ate indis- 
pensable aids: A Handbook of Greek Black-figured Vases, with a chapter 
on the Red-figured South Italian Vases, Paris 1924, and A Handbook of Attic 
Red-figured Vases, Cambridge, Mass., 1919: these volumes contain all 
the signed vases, and lists of vases which have been attributed to 
anonymous painters. 

The treatment of vases from the point of view of artistic history, 
begun in Wilhelm Klein’s Exphronios, 2nd ed., Vienna 1886 (see also his 


144 


/. wt 
2 ee 


ed, aA 


Fees oc eee * 
Ste ee OT ae AS . SD Pee Perce 
OE ee a) Se a Y ee SMe A 3 
Pen ete lRos oe. e  , Piy 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 


Griechische Vasen mit Laeblingsinschriften, 2nd ed., Leipsic 1898) has been 
continued in monumental volumes with plates; P. Hartwig, Die griechischen 
Meisterschalen der Blithezeit des Strengrothfigurigen Stiles, Berlin and Leipsic 
1893, and Furtwangler, Reichhold, Hauser, and Buschor, Griechische 
Vasenmaleret, Munich 1900-__, to be complete in 180 plates, 160 of which 
have already appeared. A great advance beyond these is represented 
by the work of the English scholar J. D. Beazley, incorporated in two 
books, Aitic Red-figured Vases in American Museums, Cambridge, Mass., 
1918, and Aituche Vasenmaler des rotfigurigen Stils, Tabingen 1925 : assisted 
by an unexampled feeling and memory for artistic forms, he essays, with 
undreamt-of success, to atrange the whole mass of red-figured vases, 
excluding the impersonal works of the decadence, into stylistic groups 
and under the hands of painters: thus laying the specialistic foundation 
for a future synthesis on a grand scale. In the study of the white-ground 
lekythoi the same foundation has been prepared for and in some measure 
laid by A. Fairbanks, Athenian White Lekythoi, Michigan Studies, VI. 
1907, VII. 1914, and W. Riezler, Werssgrundige aitische Lekythen, Munich 
1914, with a fine appreciation. Ruiezler’s plates are rolled out photo- 
graphically by A. H. Smith’s cyclograph: the same is attempted for 
surfaces with more than one curve by G. von Liicken, Greek Vase Paintings, 
Berlin and the Hague 1921 ; not as yet with complete success. 

A great advance in exact chronology and in the connexion of vase- 
painting with monumental art is made by E. Langlotz, Zur Zecthestimmung 
der Strengrotfigurigen Vasenmaleret und der gleichzeitigen Plastik, Leipsic 1920. 
By the same author a little book with 57 illustrations, excellently chosen 
and finely appreciated, Griechische Vasenbilder, Heidelberg 1922. 

For monumental painting, it is sufficient to refer to S. Reinach’s 
Répertoire, mentioned above; to the new and fundamental work with 
plates, P. Herrmann, Denkméiler der Malerei des Altertums, Munich 1906-_ ; 
and to F. Winter, Das Alexandermosaik aus Pompei, Strasburg 1909, with 
a large coloured plate. The earlier general accounts are so antiquated 
that I am obliged to refer to my own work of 1923. 

FE CPRUHL: 


T 145 


hes wee, “tal, Ss Se oe a OTe 
ass : hie | Me ate Oe 
pa eae 


INDEX 


Cre yee 375 


Achilles, 19, 25, 28, 46-7, 51, 52, 


$85°91,:202,7108) 105, 
Actor, 107. 
Aegisthus, 41. 
Aeneas, 19. 
Aeschylus, 40. 
Aesop, 62. 
Agamemnon, 52. 
Aison, 81-2. 
Ajax, ‘19; 25,°28; $2. 
Ajax Oileus, 57. 
Alcibiades, 34. 
Aldobrandini Wedding, 121. 
Alexander, 92-9. 
Alexander Mosaic, 7, 21, 92-9, 123. 
Alexandros, painter, 87, 99. 
Alkmaion, 22. 
Amasis, 26, yy 
Amazons, 42, $3, 58,59. 
Amphiaraos, 21. 
Amphitrite, 44. 
Anakles, 29. 
Andokides, 32-5, 36, 39. 
Andromeda, go-I. 
Animal-pieces, 133-7. 
Antaios, 41, 42. 
Antiphilos, 128. 
Apelles, 93, 128. 
Aphrodite, 17, 56, 63, 82, 84, 85, 

86, 121. 
Apollo, 14; 60/754; 
Apollodotos, 7, 90. 
Apple-pickers, 63-4. 
Arcadia, 109, 141. 
Archemotos, 63, 65. 
Argonauts, 57. 
Ariadne, 113, 119. 
Aristophanes, vase-painter, iis 
Aristotle, 80, 92. 


146 


Cyrene, 23. 


Arkesilas, 23. 
Artemis, 106. 
Assyrian, 18. : 
Athena, 17, 19, 31, 34, § 
85, 86. hie 
Attic Vase DaISaes 4-75 


84. 


BAROQUE, I10. 
Beazley, 145. mer 
Black-figure style, 3, 1 5-30 : 
Boeotian gravestone, 8 
Boscoreale, 118. at 
Briseis, 102. 
Brygos, 47-9, 50, 51, 3 
Beieaair 93, 128, | 
Buschor, 144, tas: 
Busiris, 18. 


‘ CAERETAN ” hyd 
Cassandra; 5.9. 9 aa 
Centaurs, 58, 61, 134° 
Chalcidian vases, ‘19. 
Chaton, 72-3525) 9) a 
Children, 79-80, 127. 3 
Chrysothemis, a : er 
Circe, 142. dea ; 
Clay-pit, 20. 
Clazomenian cata 
16. . st 
Clytemnestra, AO. sem 
Colouring, 9, 104-5. 
Comedy, 131. _ 
Corinth, 15, 84, 85. 
Corinthian plaques, 
19-22, 137. : 
Corneto, 54,87. 
Cretan‘att, i602 4 


INDEX 


DANCERS, 85. 

Daphne, 114. 

Dateios, 92. 

Delo-Melian vases, 13. 

Delphi, Treasury of Athenians, 
O° 


40. 

Demeter, 68. 

Diomede, 19, 105. 

Dionysos, 26, 37, 63, 75, 76, 77, 88, 
113, I19, Vi. 

Dioscuri, 28, 82. 

Dioskourides of Samos, 128-9. 

Dipylon vases, 11. 

Doric architeCture, 11, 17, 27, 69, 
80. 

Doutis, 50-2, 53. 

Ducati, 144. 

Dugas, 144. 


FARLY-CLASSICAL vases, 55-65. 

Egypt, 16, 23, 26. 

Egyptian mummy-portraits, 123-7. 

Egyptians, 18. 

Electra, 41. 

Encaustic, 124. 

Endymion, 115. 

Eos, 37, 51. 

Ephesus, sculpture of Temple, 17. 

Epiktetos, vase-painter, 35-7. 

Erechtheum, 78. 

Eretria, sculpture of Temple, 40. 

Ergotimos, 25. | 

Eriphyle, 21-2. 

Eros, 63, 84, 111, 112, 115, 129. 

Esquiline, landscapes from the, 139. 

Ethos, 51, 58. 

Etruria and Etruscan art, 16, 17, 30, 
53-4, 64, 84, 86, 92. 

Eucheir, 29. 

Euphranor, 81. 

Euphronios, 37, 38, 41-5, 47, 48, 
§0, 51, 53, 56, 60, 61, 64, IOT, Vi. 

Euthymides, 38-42, 61, 75. 

Exekias, 26-9, 32, 34, 42. 


FAIRBANKS, 145. 

Fayum pottraits, 124, 

Fleas, 22. 

Florid style, 7, 70, 75, 78-83, 85. 
Four-colour painting, 98. 
Fourth-century vase-painting, 83-4. 
Francois vase, 25, 27. 
Furtwangler, 145. 


GE, 60. 

Geometric vases, 11. 

Geryon, 42, 44. 

Glaukon, 56. 

Glaukos of Lycia, 19. 
Glaukos, son of Minos, 63, 65. 
Glaukytes, 29. 

CsOetne, 93. 98, 121, 123. 


HALs, 110. 

Hartwig, 145. 

Hauser, 145. 

Heétor, 38. 

Hecuba, 38. 

Hegesiboulos, 63. 

Helen, 4o. 

Helios, 84. 

Hephaistos, 26, 31. 

Hera, 17, 86. 

Herakles, 14, 18, 29, 31, 32, 35, 375 
41,42, $1, $2,537; 857 108-10; 
110-13, 121. 

Herculaneum, 87, 103, 106, 107, 
£13, 116. 

Herford, 144. 

Hetmes, 17, 72,73, 84. 

Herrmann, Paul, 103, 145. 

Hetairai, 35, 49, 85. 

Hieron, 49-50, 61. 

Hippodameia, 80. 

Hippomedon, 65. 

Hittites, 14, 16. 

Hoppin, 144. 

bise 3) n5, 14, 18, 21,028, 209 45, 
60, 94. 


147 


MASTERPIECES OF GREEK DRAWING AND PAINTING : 


Hunting, 15, 18, 72. 
Hymenaeus, 121-3. 


Hypsipyle, 65. 


ae 44, $7, 79, 102. 
Ionian vases, 15-19. 
Iphigenia, 116- -17. 


Iphikles,. 5 2-3. 

Iris, 37. 

Ttalian Vases, «Ji 19S, eas eo 
136, 


Ttalo-Ionian vases, 16, 21. 
Item, Villa, 118, 119-21. 
Ivory plaques, 85-6. 


KACHRYLION, 42. 

Kalates, 128. 

Kephisodotos, 82. 

Klein, 144. 

Klinger, ay 

Klitias, 25, 29, 30, 34. 

Knucklebone-players, 
100, 116. 

Korone, 40. 

Kypselos, Chest of, 21, 25. 


84, 87, 99, 


LACONIAN vases, 22-3, 136, 

Landscape-painting, 8, 20, 64, I10, 
139-43. 

Lange, 44, 55, 111, en 

Langlotz, 145. 

Laocoon, 115, 117. 

Leagtos, 38, 43, 44, 56. 

Lekythoi, white, 6, 54, 66-73. 

Leto, 60, 88. 

Leucippids, 82, 85. 

Light, 8. 

Linos, 52-3. 

Lions, 13, 15, 109, 133-4. 

Love-names, 5; 

Lucian, 134. 

Liicken, von, 145. 


148 


Lysippos, 107. 
Lysistrata, 45. 


MACEDONIANS, 94-6, 118. 
Maenads, 62. 
Makton, 49-50, 51, 75. 
Malta, 114. : ae 
Manners, the picture of 127 
Marathon, $75 62s oe 
Mau, 144. 
Medea, 116. 
Meidias, 70, 77, 82-3. 
Memnon, 37, 38, 51. 
Menander, 107. 
Menon, 35. 3 
Metragyrtai, 128-31, 
Mikon, 54. 
Minos, 44, 65. 
Minotaur, 81, 106. 
Mirrors, engtaved, ae 
Mnason, stele of, sh 
Mosaics, qs 92-07: 
133-7. tf 
Mummy-portraits, 12 
Myron, 61, 133. 3 


NEOPTOLEMOs, Se 57. ee 
Nike, 84, 107. os a 
Nikias, painter, 91, z aan 

Nikosthenes, 29. mt 
Niobe, 88, 99-101, 105 
Niobids, statues of, iz 


Opysszus, ‘chs 745 105, 
cia 3Je bie 
Olympia, 21, 133; sc 
Teopte of "Zeus, 58s 
Omphale, 103, pi 
Orestes, 40, 116, 
Orientalising art, 13 
Orpheus, 56, 7a 


INDEX 


PAMPHAIOS, 37, 41. Protocorinthian vases, 15. 
Pan, 84-5. Protogenes, 93. | 
Panainos, 58. Pygmies, 26, 1209. 


Panaitios painter, 44, 47, 48, vi. Pylades, 116. 
Paris, 17, 19; judgment of, 17, 85. 

Parrhasios, 7, 79, 81, 87, 90. 

Parthenon, 7, 30, 39, 55, 66, 70, 73, QUINTILIAN, 140. 


75> 77> 78; 79, 87, 88, 100. 
Pasiades, 36. 


Patroclus, 46-7, 102. RED-FIGURE Style, 4, 30-84. 
Pausias, 138. Reichhold, 145. 

Pauson, 133. Reinach, 144, 145. 
Peiraikos, 128. Riezler, 145. 

Peirithoos, 40, 61. - Rubens, 111, 121. 


Peithinos, 46, 47, 78. 
Peitho, 84, 121, 122. 


Peleus, 25, 46. SAPPHO, 64. 

Pelias, .21. Satyts, 48, 76, 109, 113, I14, 119. 

Pelops, 80, 88. Scopas, 70, 107. 

Penthesilea, 58. Sculpture, 2. 

Pentheus, 88. Scythians, 85, 117. 

Pergamene painting, 103, 108-13; Selene, 84, 115. 
sculpture, 118, 120. Sepulchral monuments, 11,29. See 

Periclean vases, 6, 39, 55, 73-8, 79. also Lekythoi. 

Perseus, 90-1. Ships, 29. 

Persians, 93-9. Sicyon, 18, 98, 101. 

Phayllos, 39. Silenus, 113, 119. 

Pheidias, 5, 55, 79, 80, 84, 86. Silphion, 23. 

Philostratos, 114. Skythes, 35-6. 

Philoxenos, 8, 92-9. Sleep and Death, 37, 72. 

Pindar, 55, 85. Sosias, 46, 47, 56. 

Pistoxenos, 52, 56, 61, 62, vi. Soso0s, 133, 135, 137- 

Pliny, 92, 116, 135. Sotades, 63-6, 77. 

Polygnotos, 54, 55, 57, 58, 61, 62, Space, rendering of, 6, 58, 78. 
63, 64, 74, 88, 107. Sthenelos, 19. 

Polyidos, 65. Still-life, 133, 137-9. 

Polykletos, 11, 80. Suitors, Odysseus and the, 57, 74-5. 

Polyphemos, 129. Swing, 76. 


Pompeii, 89, 92, 99, 103, 106, 110, 
Bre t1G, 117, 118, 133, 136. 


Portraiture, 62, 123-7. TABLETS, votive, 20. 
Pottier, 144. Talthybios, 40. 

Praxiteles, 82, 83, 85, 106. Telephos, 103, 108-10, 111. 
Priam, 17, 38. Themis, 84. 

Priapus, 111. Theocritus, 131. 


149 


Theseus, 26, 36, 40, 43, 44, 81, 106, 
107. 

Thoas, 116-7. i 

Thracians, 53, 56, 74. 

Timomachos, 116, 117. 

Tityos, 60, 

Top-spinner, 63. 

Triptolemos, 68. 

Triton, 44. 

Troilos, 25. 

Troy, taking of, 49, 50, 57, 58, 65. 


WALTERS, 144. 
Wedding, Aldobrandini, 121-3, 


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1 


Attic sepulchral amphora, 8th Century B.C. 
The dead on the bier and the lament (p. 11) 
Athens, National Museum 


Attic krater, 7th Century B.C. 
Procession of chariots: lions (p. 13) 
Munich, Museum antiker Kleinkunst 


From a Cycladic amphora, 2nd half of the 7th Century B.C. 
Apollo, with the Hyperborean maidens, received by Artemis at Delos (p. 13) 
Athens, National Museum 


uNasHyy [PUOYPNT “suagty 
(bt “d) aprq e& yam sapyesopy jo amuiedag 
‘O'd 009 % ‘eroydure s1pepda & worq 


- . 
# e ky 
es 
ae: | : 
~ Sate 


La 


e 


[Sats a 


Eye: C 


-hunt (p. 15) 


) Perfume-vase, 2nd half of the 7th Centu 


Fight, chariot race, animal frieze, hare 
Berlin, State Museums 


? 


icyonian 


“Protocorinthian’ (S 


4 


gy 


ITITZ 


EVIE EN IVF IRIN NI 


Se 
eS 


OY 


Ish(p.15) 


decorative anima 


Hanover, Kestner Museum 


b 


us, middle of the 6th Century B.C. 


poss 


Homeric combat ; 


N 


Paes 4 " ‘ 4 noes (SN gf. Z Jo > Hie®? 
SAS ANAS TSS (AS AS ASA GNIS ASS LS Al 


Te ory SE coca Ce at = Say) - 


7 


Clazomenian clay sarco 


7, 8 Clazomenian amphora, 
Dance: animal 
Berlin, 


Ist half of the 6th Century B.C. 
frieze (p. 16) 


State Museums 


From an Jonian ‘ Caeretan’ hydria, middle of the 6th Century B.C. 
Departure (p. 18) 
Berlin, State Museums 


| 


Lt 


10, 11 Ionian ‘Caeretan’ hydria, middle of the 6th Century B.C. 
Herakles and Busiris King of Egypt: hint (p. 17) 
Vienna, Oesterreichisches Museum 


450] [UL8140 aq4 
(61 “d) sayy jo Apog ay soz 3yS1q ogy 
‘Od Amiusg yI9 ay? Jo Fey asy ‘eioydwe uemproyeyD ve wory 


UNYUIEY sayyUy wnasnyy ‘quUunyy 
(91 “d) sueg jo qowspnf ayy 
‘Oa Amiuay 29 jo Fey asq ‘vroydure ueruoy-oyeyy ue wosg 


SUMAN AVIS “UtLsag 
(17 ‘d) seyag JO soured Jesoung ay) 3 advs-ONeYD ey} :sovrerydury jo omuedaq ay], 
‘yq Amiuag yI9 ay} JO Fey AST “JoIwH] urMIpUOD v WoT 


10 


15 


Corinthian krater,-middle of the 6th Century B.C. 
Battle (p. 21) 
Paris, Louvre 


16, 17 Corinthian clay tablets (dedications), 6th Century B.C. 
Poseidon, Amphitrite and Hermes : Copper-mine (p. 20) 
Berlin, State Museums 


18 
Laconian cup, Ist half of the 6th Century B.C. 


Weighing and packing of Silphium under the eyes of King Arkesilas of Cyrene (p. 


Paris, Cabinet des Médailles 


22) 


Ed 


12 


Attic krater from the workshop of Ergotimos, painted by Klitias, about the middle of 
the 6th Century B.C. 
The Calydonian Boar Hunt; the Funeral Games of Patroklos; the Gods going to the Wedding 
of Thetis; Achilles pursuing Troilos; animal frieze; Battle of Pygmies and Cranes (p. 25) 
Florence, Museo Archeologico 


1) 


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Cot: 
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ts 
x 


ANAANAAAAA 


cea Nrca cine ay: 


WV¥YWVYV YE yNyetet 


0) 


2 
er Amasis, middle of the 6th Century B.C. 


with two nymphs (p. 26) 
, Cabinet des Médailles 


Dionysos 
Parts 


Amphora by the Attic mast 


WOU LY 
Dethe 
PAD» 


| 
. 
4 


Amphora by the Attic master Exekias, 3rd quarter of the 6th Century B.C. 
Achilles and Ajax playing (p.526) 
Rome, Vatican 


15 


Cup by the Attic master Glaukytes, middle of the 6th Century B.C. 
Battle (p. 29) 
London, British Museum 


STOR. 
P CRORE 
2s) 


SAMA A 
23 
From a dinos by Exekias. 


Warships (p. 29) 
Rome, ~Castellani Collection 


22 


From the amphora Fig. 21 
The Dioscuri with their parents (p. 26) 


16 


u —  ——— i ki . 
22 
Cup by the Attic masters Nikosthenes and Anakles, 3rd quarter of the 6th Century B.C. 


Herakles and the Hydra (p. 29) 
Berlin, State Museums 


26 


Clay plaque from the frieze of an Attic tomb, middle of the 6th Century B.C. 
Women in the house of mourning (p. 29) 
‘Berlin, State Museums 


adanoy ‘std 
(c¢ -d) siauaisi] pue aposeyqy 
‘A OFS 7 ‘sapryopuy saiseur oy ayi Aq vioyduie uv woIy 
EG 


MTT ee abe ae G3 nee Ete AAAS ES EG ORIG a EM RNR BE RET Ai AS 


C. 


o 
: agEaES) 


(12 wy gO 


18 


ty of Andokides, cf. Fig. 27 
(p. 34) 


painter of the facto 
Munich, Museum antiker Kleinkunst 


Herakles feasting, with Athena 


From an unsigned amphora by the chief 


19 


From an Attic cup, ¢. 520 B.C. 
Women at their wine (p. 35) 
Madrid, Archaeological Museum 


30 31 
30, 31 From two plates by the painter Epiktetos, c. 520-510 BGs 


Reveller; Warrior with Horse (p. 35) 
Paris, Cabinet des Médailles London, British Museum 


32, 33 From a cup by the painter Skythes, c. 520 B.C. 
Theseus and the Highwayman ; youth playing and singing (p. 36) 
Rome, Villa Giulia 


34 From an unsigned cup by, the painter Skythes, c. 520 B.C. 
Warrior running (p. 36) 
Paris, Louvre 


‘Stamnos’ from the workshop of Pamphaios, probably painted by Oltos, ¢, 520-510 B.C. 
Herakles and Acheloos (p. 37) 
London, British Museum 


o* 


35 
From a perfume-vase by the. master Pasiades, c. 510 B.C. 
Consecration to.Dionysos (p. 36) 
London, British Museum 


2] 


Ze 


UnNasnW Ysiutsg “uopuoy 
(L€ ‘d) uouwayy yo Apoq ayn Suny ywaq pure dasys 


‘Da OTS 2 ‘soreyd 


Weg Joisvur aya Aq dno & worg 


Le 


\ at ws 
es tae fo fe 
vt Bt oe / Ma +0) 

; : Z cal 


23 


Munich, Museum antiker Kleinkunst 


From an amphora by the painter Euthymides, end of the 6th Century B.C. 
A youth (‘Hector’) arming with the assistance of his parents (p. 38) 


2 


4 


phora Fig. 38 


From the am 


39) 


Ss (p. 


Reveller 


LV any 
N 


psunyzuLay sayuyUup unmasmyy ‘quUunyy 
(6¢ -d) Sursmovsd Jamosyi-soosiq 
‘yq Amaiusy yi9 ay Jo pus ‘saprudying soqured oy Aq vroydure ur wosy 


OV 


aa ee 


26 


<j 
4 
Sid 
3 
} 


3 ee 


of the 6th Century B.C. 


p- 40) 


painter Euthymides, end: 


Unsigned amphora by the 


, Museum antiker Kleinkunst 


carrying off Korone ( 


Theseus 
Munich 


la 


4 
Detail of Fig. 41 


Reverse of Fig. 41 


28 


(or -d) 
‘Od Amiuay y9 ay 


UNANYWY Sagrstgmassagsay “vuuat/ 
enssueid{y Aq pauaivary pue snyisisoy Surkeys s31s31Q 
1 JO pus ‘saprurdying Jared ayi jo apm aya woy ,axyed, e wor 


ee 


os 


45 


44, 45 From an amphora, about 500 B.C. 
Maenads (p. 41) 
Munich, Museum antiker Kleinkunst 


30 


46 


Unsigned crater by the painter Euphronios, end of the 6th Century B.C. 
Youths in the palaestra (p. 43) 
Berlin, State Museums 


31 


nios, end of the 6th Century B.C. 


Revellers ( 


krater by the painter Euphro 


Herakles and the Amazons: 


From an unsigned 


p. 4 


Arezzo, Museo Pubblico 


NS 
[oy 


8 


4 
nature of the master Euphronios, ¢ 500 B.C. 


with Athena before Am 


phitrite (p. 43) 


Louvre 


> 


Paris 


& 


Theseus 


Cup with the si 


oo 


From a cup with the signature of the master Euphronios, ¢. 500 B.C. 
Old gentleman and lyre-player (p. 45) 
London, British Museum 


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AM, 
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From a cup by the painter Peithinos, ¢. 500 B.C. 
Peleus and Thetis (p. 46) 
Berlin, State Museums 


35 


b.G 


beginning of the 5th Century, 


State Museums 


3 


Achilles binding up Pacoclos: wound (p. 46) 
Berlin 


From a cup by the master Sosias 


36 


bLNOT ‘St4Bg 


(Lp ‘d) Soy, Jo yes ayy 
‘OA O8F-06F » ‘soddig saiseur aya Aq dno v 


wor] 


37 


UMASNYY SOGILIIGILGISATISUM YY ‘ANGZAN AA 
(gp ‘d) sj3 yam srayfaaoy 
‘Ya Osp 2 ‘soshig soiseur aya Aq dnp 


€¢ 


38 


cup Fig. 53 


After the wine 


(p. 49) 


From the 


39 


55, 56 Kantharos and kotyle by the master Brygos, ¢. 490-480 B.C. 
A god pursuing a maiden ; practising for the long jump (p. 47) 
Boston, Museum of Fine Arts 


40 


57 


From an unsigned’ cup by the master Brygos, c. 490 B.C. 
Dionysos and Silens (p. 49) 
Paris, Cabinet des Médailles 


41 


SUAS afPIS ‘Utjsag 
(o¢ ‘d) speruavur Supurq 
‘D'd O84-06F 9 
‘smyeusis sty MoM Inq vorTyey, Aq parured ‘uosarF{ Jo doysysom ayi woy dnd v wosy 


8S 


eames aE p 
Barrel 


A 
at 
Fs } 


— 


42 


59 


From an unsigned cup by a painter who worked for Hieron, ¢. 480-470 B.C. 
Episode from the Sack of Troy (p. 50) 
Petrograd, Hermitage 


Kantharos by the painter Duris, c. 490 B.C. 
Herakles and the Amazons (p. 51) 
Brussels, Musée du Cinquantenaire 


43 


From a cup by the painter Duris, c, 490 B.C., cf. Figs. 62 and 63 
Odysseus handing Neoptolemos the armour of Achilles (p. 52) 
Vienna, Oesterreichisches Museum 


44 


(z¢ “d) sayjryoy jo mowsze ay aa0 Surpasrenb snasskpO pur xely 
€9 pur 19 ‘ss1q dnd ayi wWory 


45 


G 


‘d) snassApo pur xely usami0q Sun, 


Z9 pue [9 ‘ss1q dnd ay) wor 


EX? 


46 


64 


From a cup by the painter Duris, c. 490-480 B.C. 
Eos with the body of her son Memnon (p. 51) 
Paris, Louvre 


47 


at 


sunasnW avs ‘urpsag 
(1¢ ‘d) auads Jooyss 
‘)q O8F 2 ‘stanq soqured ay) Aq dnd v wosy 


67 


66; 67 From a kotyle by the master Pistoxenos, c. 470 B.C. 
Herakles on the way to the music-master Linos (p. 52) 
Schwerin, Museum 


a) 


PEARS ae NHy 


2) 


ae 


uuinbav{, fo kaajauas ‘ojatso’) 
(yc ‘d) aourq 
gq Amiuay yi¢ ay) jo yey assy “Sunured quo} uvssnng 


ee a RAI 


= 


50 


unasnyy jvu0LUN ‘suaqipy 
(9¢ d) uewom uvprmyy ev pur snaydio 
‘O'd Oly 2 ‘dnd punos8-aurym v Woy 


69 


51 


UNASHWY SLAG ‘U0puoT 
(9¢ ‘d) asooy ay? uo aurporydy 
‘Jy’ OLF 2 ‘dno punois-ary 


OL 


D2 


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a S 
S 
Bik 
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20 


72 

Large cup, ¢. 460 B.C. 
Apollo and the giant Tityos (p. 60) 
Munich, Museum antiker Kleinkunst 


73 
Cup, ¢. 460 B.C. 
Attic youths with army horses (p. 60) 
Hamburg, Museum fiir Kunst und Industrie 


54 


omUdoj0aqasyy oasMyyy ‘aIuasopy 
(19 ‘d) sooyusieg jo Zurppom oy? iv AyovuoIne}UaD 
‘Od OOF 2 ‘JaIVID ve WOT 


ee i cc i ll es ea 


55 


From two craters, c. 460 B.C. 


Amazonomachies (p. 59) 
Bologna, Museo Civico — Geneva, Musée d’ Art et d’ Histoire 


56 


ASD 


MT UUUU UUUUM UU 


as 


ry) 


From a crater, c. 460 B.C. 
Herakles and Athena and heroes (p. 57) 
Paris, Louvre 


f9 


From a cup, ¢. 460 B.C. 
Aesop and the Fox (p. 62) 
Rome, Vatican 


78 


From a crater, c. 460 B.C. 
Warrior (p. 62) 
New York, Metropolitan Museum 


a7 


58 


UXT ay 


80 


From an amphora, c. 450 B.C. 
Two'maenads (p. 62) 
Lower edge of the garments, and feet, save the toes on the right, restored 
Paris, Cabinet des Médailles 


My 


of 

Wp 
CO TP em 
eit 


= 


81 


Cup by the master Hegesibulos, c. 460 B.C. 
Top-spinner (p. 63) 
Brussels, Musée du Cinquantenatre 


82, 83 From two cups by the master Sotades, about the middle of the 5th Century B.C. 
Apple-picking ; the Death of Archemoros (Hippomedon and the Snake) (pp. 63 and 64) 
London, British Museum 


59 


60 


Cup by the master Sotades, about the middle of the 5th Century B.C. 
Glaukos and Polyidos in the Tomb (p. 65) 
London, British Museum e 


SD A ASAI, 


86 


86, 86 From two white-ground tomb-lekythoi, about the middle of the 5th Century B.C. 
Eleusinian divinities; the dead youth and the girl with gifts at the tomb (pp. 67 and 66) 
Berlin, State Museums — Athens, National Museum 


61 


4 if i aie joy we eke) 


62 


UNASNYWY [OUNTIPNT ‘suaq{y 
(69 pue 99 dd) yinod prap ay? yrtm ‘oars ay2 JO 3M) oy 
‘)'q Amiuay ya¢ ay) Jo a[pprur ‘soyidyaq-quioi & WoIy 


63 


ee 
ars 
Og, 
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Sleep and Death 


Museum 


before the walk to the cemetery (pp. 67-73) 


arter of the Sth Century B.C. 
‘ts — New York, Metropolitan Museum — Athens, National 


qu 


-lekythoi, 3rd 
the dead on the bier - 


. 
> 


91 From tomb 


soo 
Woman and handmaiden 


Boston, Museum of Fine Ar 


(part) 


uU 
Ss 
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The dead woman and a girl with gifts at the grave 
Athens, 


From tomb 


Seka 


92 


66 


ry B.C. 


ddle of the 5th Centu 
g (p. 68) 


, mi 


Leave-takin 
Athens, National Museum 


From a tomb lekythos 


67 


96 


95, 96 From tomb-lekythoi, 3rd quarter of the 5th Century B.C. 
The dead youth and a girl with gifts at the grave ; lament, and libation to the dead (pp. 69 and 71) 
Berlin, State Museums 


68 


aanoy ‘stsvg 
(6Z pur ZZ ‘dd) quasasd uoseyD yum ‘avid ay3 Jo are ay 
‘DA OOF 2 ‘soys4yaT-quioi & Wor 


69 


SUMASHY VIG ‘Ulj4ag 
(pL ‘d) ssoyng ay? pur snasskpQ 
aod 


¢ 


‘y'q Aimuay yI¢ dy) Jo o[ppru 


Swern aency seer hr 


CENA NAT NM fj Ai if F 


MARANA aN VE MA Wa Me VAM Waa HIE 


70 


From a crater, middle of the 5th Century B.C. 
Orpheus among the Thracians (p. 74) 
Berlin, State Museums 


101 


Bowl, middle of the 5th Century B.C. 
A satyr swinging a girl at the spring festival (p. 76) 
Berlin, State Museums 


71 


Crater (‘stamnos’), 3rd quarter of the 5th Century B.C. 
Warrior leaving home (p. 102) 
Munich, Museum antiker Kleinkunst 


2 


uorrajor) 1yS(4oJ4VZ ‘moqonjoy 
(¢Z ‘d) sosAuorq jo [eansay 
‘Og Anquan yI¢ ay Jo arppru “(souwris,) JoIvID v WOIy 


EO 


, Wit 


ay 


| 


73 


SUMAN WAS ‘Utj4ag 
(LZ ‘d sJamoyfoy sty puv soskuorq 


‘YE OFF moge “ soyrCya] aenbd_,) asea-aurngsod v wor] 


SOT 


spp aur fo unasnyy ‘uossog 
(oz ‘d) peuavyy Surdaays v Surpuy sifaeg 
“yq Ammauay yr¢ ay} Jo souenb pi¢ ‘snl ve wor 


vol 


74 


196 


Small jug for the spring festival of the little boys, about the ead of the Sth Century B.C. 
Boy and hare (p. 79) 
Munich, private collection 


107 


From a cup by the painter Aison, towards the end of the 5th Century 
Theseus with the dead Minotaur (p. 81) 
Madrid, Archaeological Museum 


75 


0I/GGN VAN ‘OZZaL 
(08 ‘d) vraurepoddiy yo Surdised sdojag 
‘yg Ammauay yr¢ ay Jo Joqsenb asey ‘vioydwe ue wory 


eles EMSs eles 


— 1) & NS . 
j 


801 


{ 


i . 


(a os) 
I Gy y are \: 
fi f \ 
ss sS: CY firme 
AAAARAANS nA & JAN NANAAAAAAAAIAR AAR 


76 


Unasnyy qsitag ‘uopuoty 
bt (zg ‘d) soddionaq jo ssaiySnep aya yo Surdssed 1mds01q ay 
Og Amuay yr¢ ayp Jo Jouenb asyy ‘serprayy soaseus ayp Aq eispdy & WoIJ 


601 


oF 


AaaPILUAIEY ‘PVASOM A 


(¢g ‘d) seyy urlory ay) asooy 1a] 02 SuIploap spoy ayy 


‘Og Aimuay yy ey) Jo apprur aya noqe “(ayrad,) 


OIT 


voydure ue wo1y 


78 


Lat 


Engraved bronze mirror-box, mid 4th Century B.C. 
Aphrodite or Peitho and Pan playing dibs (p. 84) 
London, British Museum 


P12 


Mirror-case like Fig. 111, about the second half of the 4th Century B.C. 
Dancers (p. 85) 
Paris, Louvre 


114 


113, 114 Ivory veneer from a wooden sarcophagus, mid 4th Century B.C. 
Athena and Aphrodite : Chariot (p. 85) 
Petrograd, Hermitage 


80 


ELD 


Tombstone of Mnason,’from Thebes, ¢.*430 B.C.-(p. 86) 
Thebes, Museum 


81 


From the wall-painting in an Etruscan tomb-chamber, c. 400 B.C. 
Female head (p. 87) 
Corneto, cemetery of Tarquini 


82 


um 


? 


y Alexandros of Athens 


Leas 
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GC & 
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Taos 
Owes. 
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Copy on marble after a class 


83 


o- poe : : enn = 
> § 


fant. ¢ 


118 


s 


Pompeian wall-painting, 1st Century A.D. 
Pentheus torn by the Maenads (p. 89) 
Pompeii, House of the Vettii 


84 


L119 


Pompeian wall-painting, 1st Century A.D. (probably after a picture by Nikias, 
second half of the 4th Century B.C.) 
Perseus freeing Andromeda (p. 90) 
Naples, Museo Nazionale 


85 


120 


Copy on marble after a picture of the 4th__3rd Century B.C. ; from Pompeii, 1st Century B.C. or A.D. 
The daughters of Niobe slain by the arrows of Artemis (p. 99) 
Naples, Museo Nazionale 


86 


87 


ert al og 


he 4th Century # ‘bly by Philoxengs - found in Pompeii ; 3rd_—2nd Century B.C. 
A f a painting of the end of t € threatel etn Dee 
Copy in mosaic from 


Being ; 
Alexander the Greet S77), 78 Datius (pp. 7 and 92) 


88 


. Mee ee 
aE AM RE 4 


122 


Pompeian wall-painting, 1st Century A.D. 
Achilles handing over Briseis to Agamemnon’s heralds (p. 102) 
Naples, Museo Nazionale 


‘7 “s ) s 


ca Lot ‘ 
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avUuorzPn oasnyy ‘saqun 
(€01 ‘d) soxkyg 2 sapawoxcq jo sisiy$ 


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invp oy Suoure sopawoid pur snasshpO Aq pasaaoostp saT[TWOy 
‘av Amauay ast ‘Sunured-yem uviaduiog 


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Seep. gen Hale 


Reg geCWERE 


Ae; 


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te¥ 


Ol 


Herculanean wall-painting, 1st Century A.D. 
Theseus victorious over the Minotaur (p. 106) 
Naples, Museo Nazionale 


92 


125 


Re a Picture on stucco from Herculaneum, 1st Century A.D. 
An actor dedicating a tragic mask (p. 107) 
Naples, Museo Nazionale 


oe: 


126 


Herculanean wall-painting, 1st Century A.D. 
Herakles finding his son Telephos in the mountains of Arcadia (p. 108) 
Naples, Museo Nazionale 


94 


127 


Pompeian wall-painting, 1st Century A.D. 
Dionysos finding the sleeping Ariadne in Naxos (p. 113) 
Naples, Museo:Naztonale 


95 


128 


phale (p. 110) 


ry A.D. 


ueen Om 


lan 


, Museo Nazionale 


painting, 1st Centu 


slave of the Lyd 
Naples 


peian wall- 


Pom 


Herakles as 


96 


oF. 


~~ 
a Sy eh een & 


SEE APS ee a 


Ee 
i 


Pompeian.wall-painting, 1st Century A.D. 
Apollo and Daphne (p. 114) 
Pompeii, House of the Dioscuri 


98 


nd) ene eh A AAOAD ag ay 


ee 


sp one yer 


130 


23 


, 


1st Century -A.D. 


Apollo and Daphne (p. 114) 
Pompeii, House VII, 12 


Pompeian wall-painting, 


99 


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Pompeian wall-painting, 1st Century A.D. 
Endymion‘and Selene (p. 115) 
Naples, Museo Nazionale 


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101 


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Pompeian wall-painting, 1st Century A.D. 
Lovers with a nest of Erotes (p. 115) 
Naples, Museo Nazionale 


102 


134, 135 Herculanean wall-painting, 1st Century 
A.D., and engraved gem: probably after a picture 
by Timomachos (1st Century B.C.) 
Medea before the murder of her children (p. 116) 


Naples, Museo Nazionale—Florence, Museo 
Archeologico 


103 


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Ist Century A.D. 
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Wall-painting from Boscoreale near Pompeii, 1st Century B.C. 
Husband and wife (p. 118) 
New York, Metropolitan Museum 


105 


138 


Wall-painting from Boscoreale near Pompeii, 1st Century B.C. 
Girl playing the lyre (p. 118) 
New York, Metropolitan Museum 


106 107 


Roman wall-paintin it the birth of Christ 


; a he bridegroom “Aldobrandini Wedding’, p.121 ) 
The bride waiting for the Rome, Vib Library 8>P 


108 


140 


1st Century B.C. 


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141 


Part of a wall-painting in the Villa Item near Pompeii, 1st Century B.C. 
Dionysiac Initiation (p. 119) 


110 


(611 ‘d) vonenruy deishuoiqg 
‘Og Ammjuay ast ‘tadurog Ivau way eA ay) ul Sunured-yem v jo weg 


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143 


Mummy portrait, 1st Century A.D. (p. 126) 
Copenhagen, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek 


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ortrait, 2nd Century A.D. (p. 127) 


don, National Gallery 


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116 


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150 


Mosaic by Dioskourides of Samos, from Pompeii, 2nd—1st Century B.C. 
Mendicant musicians (p. 129) 
Naples, Museo Nazionale 


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152 


Mosaic from Pompeii, c. 2nd Century B.C. 
Lion and panther (p. 134) 
Naples, Museo Nazionale 


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120 


Mosaic from the Villa of the Emperor Hadrian 
The genuine headtof the tiger in Fig. 153, there a modern restoration (p. 136) 


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Mosaic from Pompeii, c. 2nd Century B.C. 


Sea-creatures and shore landscape (p. 136) 
Naples, Museo Nazionale 


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156 
Pompeian wall-painting, 1st Century A.D. 


Still-life (p. 139) 
Naples, Museo Nazionale 


123 


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Mosaic from a Roman building of the 2nd Century A.D. 
Basket of flowers (p. 139) 
Rome, Vatican 


158 


Pompeian wall-painting, Ist Century A.D. 
Mountain sanctuary (p. 142) 
Naples, Museo Nazionale 


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124 
125 


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From a Roman wall-fitze, 1st Century B.C. 


Landscapes from the Odyssey : the Laeswgons destroying the ships of Odysseus : 
to the right the islam of Circe (p. 139) 
Rome, Vatten Library 


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